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A HISTORY 

OF 

MODERN EUROPE 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

C. F. CLAY, Manager 

Hontom: FETTER LANE, E.C. 

EHinfrorflij: ioo PRINCES STREET 




Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. 

ILcipjtg: F. A. BROCKHAUS 

£efo gorfe: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

iSombatJ anti Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 

Toronto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd. 

SToftgo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 



All rights reserved 



A HISTORY 

OF 

MODERN EUROPE 

FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 
SIXTEENTH CENTURY 



by 

JOHN E. MORRIS 

D.Litt. (Oxford), Litt.D. (Manchester), Assistant Master in Bedford 
Grammar School 



Cambridge : 
at the University Press 
1914 



,V\i 



Cambridge : 

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 



PKEFACE 

"A potentate who keeps a very small army and don't mean any 
harm." Henky Kingsley. 

THE said potentate's own statement was "L/Empire, 
c'est la Paix." But, whether he spoke sincerely or 
not, he was forced into war to justify his seizure of power 
and to show himself worthy of being a Napoleon. He 
found himself fighting, just because he had, or thought 
he had, the means. On the other hand, the grandson of 
his great and successful rival has also a small army, and 
has not yet used it. 

It may seem queer for an author to preface a new 
book with an apology. But I must say that to present 
to young students the story of Philip II and Henry of 
Navarre, of G-ustavus and Louis XIY and Frederick, of 
the Republic and the Empire, of United Germany and 
United Italy, and yet to abstain from giving details of 
wars, has seemed to me impossible. At least they can 
learn the need of readiness in face of possible dangers, 
the evils of disunion, and the influence of war as bringing 
out the best or the worst instincts, devotion or greed, 
according as a nation's cause is just or unjust. The part 
played by England, or by Great Britain, in several great 
wars is worthy of their study. Yet they will have but a 
distorted view of history if they read only of their own 
country. The best way for them to understand the 
aspirations of neighbouring nations is to look into the 



ri PREFACE 

causes of the struggles, the means whereby the Dutch 
shook themselves free from Spain and the Houses of 
Hohenzollern and Savoy won their way to lead Germany 
and Italy, and the consequences of successful efforts, while 
our country was, as it were, on the fringe of European 
complications. So, after all, I do not apologise for 
putting war in the front place. A despot to satisfy 
personal ambition overawes his neighbours, or a nation 
in arms professes to spread to others the benefits of its 
superior "ideas/' and at once resistance is laudable. 
Only the fighting machine may be made too strong, and 
then the instrument of honourable defence may become 
the instrument of wanton aggression, for the simple 
reason that the sovereign or nation possessing it wishes 
to use it. 

J. E. M. 

Bedford, 

May, 1914. 



CONTENTS 



I. Europe in the Sixteenth Century 

II. Philip II and the Ascendancy of Spain 

III. The Growth of France. The Thirty Years 

IV. France at her zenith .... 

V. The Predominance of Prussia . 

VI. The French Revolution 

VII. The Napoleonic Empire 
VIII. From Waterloo to the Berlin Congress 

IX. The New Europe .... 

Index 



War 



PAGE 
1 

20 
47 
70 
113 
142 
173 
203 
258 

274 



MAPS 

NO. 

I. The Peace of Westphalia .... 

II. The Netherlands 

III. Germany 

IV. North Italy 

V. Battle-plans of Austerlitz and Jena-Auerstadt 

VI. The Campaign of Waterloo 

VII. The Franco-German War .... 



62 
107 
133 
165 
176 
199 
249 



PEDIGREES 

NO. 

I. The House of Hapsburg . 

II. The Houses of Valois — Bourbon 
The House of Lorraine-Guise . 

III. The House of Hapsburg {continued) 

IV. The Houses of Orange — Stuart — Bourbon — 

Hapsburg .... 

V. The Bourbon Crowns 

VI. The later Hapsburgs and Bourbons 

VII. The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha 



3 

22 
22 
50 

98 
118 
152 
214 



ERRATA 



p. 138, for Joseph I read Joseph II. 

p. 228, 1. 9, for therefore read so they all. 

p. 229, 1. 15, for firelock read musket. 

p. 231, at top, /or 1853-4 read 1854-5. 

p. 247, 1. 16, for Napoleon with MacMahon read and. 



CHAPTER I 

EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

To say that the national fortunes of England and 
the very existence and growth of our Empire depended 
entirely upon the outcome of the national struggle against 
three great men in turn is a commonplace. But it is 
extremely important to understand what were the re- 
sources of these powers against which we fought, and it is 
not every Englishman who is willing to acknowledge that 
Spain and France had many other enemies than ourselves. 
In fact, it would not be too much to say that Philip II, 
Louis XIV, and Napoleon, failed in turn because each had 
too many irons in the fire and that, though England 
played an extremely important part in their overthrow, 
yet it was the number of enemies that each created 
against himself that ultimately decided each of the great 
struggles. 

If we wish to take a distinct date from which to mark 
the development of England, we shall find that the ten 
years, 1550 — 60, are of great importance in the history 
of Europe as well as in our own. As far as we are con- 
cerned, the loss of Calais and the accession of Queen 
Elizabeth usher in a new era. At the same time Charles V 
— the fifth Emperor of the name, but King Charles I of 
Spain — abdicated and left Austria under his brother 
Ferdinand, Spain and the Spanish dominions and the 
Netherlands under his son Philip II. A long series of 
wars between Spain and the Empire on the one side and 

M. E. H. 1 



2 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

France on the other, wars mostly f ought out in Italy, 
came to an end by the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis in 
1559. The Treaty of Augsburg in 1555 gave to Germany 
a religious settlement which lasted into the next century. 
The concentration of power in the Hapsburg family 
is well known. Maximilian of Austria married Mary of 
Burgundy, sole heiress of Charles the Bold ; their son, 
Philip, married Joan of Spain, daughter of Ferdinand 
and Isabella; their son was Charles Y. Therefore this 
prince was Archduke of Austria by paternal right, King 
of Spain by maternal, master of the Burgundian Nether- 
lands and the County of Burgundy through his grand- 
mother, and also Emperor by election. His strength was 
more apparent than real, for he could not secure the 
implicit obedience of all his subjects. He was most fond 
of the Netherlands, and in the eyes of the Spaniards was 
a foreigner and a Fleming. But Philip II, his son, lived 
in Spain, and was a foreigner and tyrant to the Nether- 
landers. In Italy both father and son were foreigners, 
holding Lombardy and Naples, Sardinia and Sicily, as 
conquerors in the struggle against France for the mastery 
in that fair land. In Germany the conflicting interests of 
many rulers were so individual that Charles could never 
be an autocrat there. 

Taking Germany first, we find a host of church and 
lay potentates, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, 
princes, strong or weak, ruling over lands wide or small, 
Catholic or Lutheran or Calvinistic, and in their midst 
many great free cities. These formed the Empire, 
nominally the Holy Roman Empire. As the outcome of 
many struggles in the early Middle Ages a system of 
election had become crystallised, and on the death of an 
emperor, or it may be by anticipation before his death, 
seven great lords met together to choose his successor. 
The seven Electors were the three Archbishops of Koln 
(Cologne), Trier (Treves), and Mainz (Mayence), the 



THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 3 

Margraf (Marquis, count of the mark or borderland) of 
Brandenburg, the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine, 
and the King of Bohemia; the last named ruled over 
a non-Grerman people. For a long period they elected an 
Austrian Archduke of the Hapsburg dynasty. While 
Charles V was yet alive they had already chosen his 
brother Ferdinand to be King of the Romans, a title 
preparatory to that of Emperor, and Charles had handed 
over to Ferdinand the government of Austria. The one 
thing that Germany needed was unity. The hundreds of 
great and small rulers could not combine when each was 
seeking his own good, and, although the Empire was 
divided into Circles for administration and for the raising 
of imperial armies, there was no possibility of any willing 
cohesion. There was a central governing body, the Diet, 
to which came the feudal tenants-in-chief and the repre- 
sentatives of the free cities, but rival interests prevented 
anything being done for the common good. 



HOUSE OF HAPSBUEG. 



Maximilian I of Austria 

m. 

Mary of Burgundy 



Ferdinand of Aragon 

m. 

Isabella of Castile 



Isabella 
of Portugal 



Philip of Austria m. Joanna of Spain 



Charles I of Spain 

(Emperor Charles V) 

abdicated 1556 



Spanish 



Hapsburgs 



Ferdinand I 

Emperor: 1556—64 

Austrian I Hapsburgs 

Maximilian II 



Catharine 

m. 
Henry VIII 

Anne of 

Bohemia and 

Hungary 



Margaret 

Governess of the 

Netherlands 

m. 

Duke of Parma 

I 

Alexander of Parma 

d. 1592 



Don John 

of 

Austria 



Philip II = Anne (fourth wife) * 
1556—98 | 

I -H 

| Philip III 

Isabella 

* (1) Mary of Portugal 



Archduke Albert 



Mary Tudor 
Elizabeth of Valois 

1—2 



4 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

German unity might have been secured in the sixteenth 
century. Trade does a great deal to combine peoples 
together, and the free cities were great centres of trade. 
The root of a great commercial tree was Venice, and the 
trunk along which the sap flowed was the old Roman 
road which ascended the valley of the Adige from Italy 
into the Austrian Tyrol, crossed the Alps by the Brenner 
Pass, descended to the river Inn, and so reached the 
Danube. Many branches diverged eastwards to Vienna, 
westwards up the Danube and its tributaries to Ratisbon, 
Augsburg and Ulm, northwards over the gap through the 
mountains of North Bavaria to Nuremburg and on to 
the Rhine. In central Germany the line of commerce 
stretched out to Magdeburg and Halberstadt, and thence 
to the cities of the coast. The cities were fortified and 
most of them were self-governed, and the feudal lords 
were too much indebted to them for the necessaries of 
peace and war to attempt to destroy them. There was 
a second possible factor of German unity besides trade, 
namely German learning; and the outbreak of the Lutheran 
movement was due to the German learned mind, which 
rejected the religious domination of an Italian Pope and 
examined points of doctrine for itself. Now Napoleon 
said that Charles V ought to have been a Protestant and 
put himself at the head of a national German movement 
to secure both religious and political unity; many 
historians have adopted this view. But Charles held the 
medieval theory of Church and State, Emperor and Pope 
each supreme in his own place. The consequence was 
that the Lutheran movement, deprived of the Emperor's 
support, was to a very large extent destructive only. The 
German conscience approved of Luther's defiance of the 
authority of Rome, but clung to the right of private 
judgement, which he invoked against Rome ; if Luther 
challenged the right of the Pope on questions of doctrine, 
other Germans challenged the authority of Luther himself. 



TRADE AND RELIGION IN GERMANY 5 

The consequence was that the Reformation intensified 
the spirit of disunion. The constructive reformer was 
John Calvin, and his form of Church government as 
founded in Geneva was a model copied by the reformers 
of Scotland, of France, of Holland, when the great revolt 
broke out against Philip, and of some German states. 
The Calvinistic doctrines were hard and fast, and had to 
be accepted by all those who were subject to a national 
Calvinistic Church. On the other hand the Church of 
Rome, getting rid of its worst abuses and purifying itself, 
initiated the counter-Reformation, in which the chief agent 
was the newly instituted Order of Jesus. Thus a large 
part of Germany was lost to Protestantism. 

In 1555 the religious Peace of Augsburg was made, 
being the work of Ferdinand, not of Charles. Ferdinand 
was not a bad Catholic, but he was an opportunist, that 
is to say ready to give up something for the sake of a 
greater advantage, and his object was to stop the dis- 
memberment of Germany so as to be able to make head 
against the Turks. The principle of this peace was Cujus 
Regio ejus Religio ; whoever was the lord of a region 
should decide what its religion should be. Therefore the 
rights of German peoples were disregarded, and individual 
princes settled the form of Church government for their 
own lands, whilst pledging themselves not to interfere 
with each other. Germany now remained comparatively 
quiet until the horrible Thirty Years' War of the next 
century. Church lands in countries already Protestant 
were secularised, that is to say administered for the 
benefit of their lay rulers. Thus in the next century 
there were possibilities of confusion and war whenever 
the Church of Rome should try to regain these secularised 
lands. In the meanwhile a Council was sitting at Trent 
on the Adige, and therefore on the high road between 
Italy and Germany, to discuss the policy of the Church. 
It held its last sitting in 1563; it left several points 



6 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

unsettled, but did much to revive the spiritual life of 
Roman Catholics. 

The main object in life of Ferdinand, and of Maximilian 
who succeeded him, was to beat back the Turks, and 
therefore their eyes were always turned eastwards so that 
they had very little influence over the questions which 
agitated Spain and France. Ferdinand, marrying the 
heiress of the last king of Hungary and Bohemia 1 , added 
those non-German lands to the Hapsburg dominions, and 
thus brought about the " Dual Monarchy " which exists 
to-day. But then two-thirds of the Hungary that we 
know was in the power of the Turks, Buda included. 
Wars between Christian states always gave to the Turks 
their opportunity, even as the Crusaders had failed to 
effect a permanent lodgement in Palestine because of the 
rivalries and jealousies between them. But while the 
Emperors were devoted to the defence of Europe by land 
against the Turks, the commotions which had occurred in 
Germany in connection with the Reformation had so upset 
the country that the great promise of German unity, which 
seemed possible about the year 1500, had by 1550 dis- 
appeared. Most of the minor princelings devoted them- 
selves to supplying German mercenaries to England or 
to France or even to Spain, — in fact to whoever could 
pay them. The great bulk of almost any 16th century 
army was composed of German Landsknechts, chiefly 
masses of foot pikemen, or of mounted Schwarzreiters, 
and both had an evil reputation as being neither loyal to 
their employers nor competent in their own profession, let 
alone the fact that they murdered and plundered piti- 
lessly. But whatever the defects of these mercenaries, 
they were too useful to the King of France or to the 

1 The Bohemians belong to the great Slavonic group of nations, such 
as the Prussians, Poles, Russians, Croats, Servians and others. The 
Hungarians or Magyars are a race apart; but only a proportion of the 
population of Hungary is Magyar, and the rest is Slavonic or Rumanian. 



VENICE AND THE TURKS 7 

Netherlander to be disregarded, and even the King of 
Spain would often enlist thousands of them, though so 
vastly inferior to his own trained Spaniards, simply to 
prevent his enemies from enlisting them. Another theory 
of German failure is connected with trade. When Venice 
began to decline in consequence of the discovery of the 
Cape route to India by the Portuguese and the divergence 
of Asiatic trade from the Levant to Lisbon, the loss of the 
trade from the overland Brenner Pass route might be 
compared to the drying up of the sap of the trunk of the 
tree. Germany now looked for her commerce to the 
Netherlands and the northern ports, not to Venice. 

As the Emperor was the bulwark of Christianity by 
land against the Turks, so was the aristocratic Republic 
of Venice by sea. By the middle of the 16th century, 
not only was Venice feeling this decline of her eastern 
trade owing to the rise of Portugal, but she had to put 
forth efforts beyond her power to check the spread of the 
Ottoman dominion over Greece and the islands off the 
coast of the Adriatic. It was not only Turkish conquest 
that was against her. Wealth always causes jealousy; 
and the various Powers, though themselves benefiting by 
the trade which Venice gave to them, resented very much 
the conquest of the hinterland which we know as Venetia. 
As long as the city of the lagoons was merely a trading 
city, she stirred no kings against herself. When she 
gradually conquered Padua and Verona and the whole of 
the lower Adige, and even as far as the eastern borders of 
Lombardy, it was thought that she was going beyond 
her province, for she thus dominated the lands by which 
Germany was connected with Italy, namely the outlet of the 
Brenner route ; and so the League of Cambrai was formed 
against her in 1508. Yet, on the conclusion of the war of. the 
League of Cambrai, she regained all her mainland empire, 
for she was ever a clever and a lenient mistress. Now the 
problem for the Venetian Senate in face of the Turkish 



8 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

advance was a very difficult one. If she opposed the 
Turks with all her might, the Sultan had only to refuse 
leave for Venetian traders to come to his dominions. Thus 
we find, alternately, a compromise made with the Turkish 
government to leave to Venice such trade in the Levant 
as still remained, and an open state of war. And it was 
not only the government of the Sultan that had to be 
considered. The advance guard of the Mohammedans 
were the pirates who infested all the shores of North 
Africa. On one occasion Charles V stirred himself to 
make a mighty effort, and captured Tunis in 1535 from 
the great corsair Kheyr-ed-din, usually known as Barba- 
rossa 1 ; but in 1541 another great expedition against 
Algiers failed completely. The Spaniards continued to 
garrison Goletta, the port of Tunis, up to 1574, when it 
was finally lost for ever; and from this date right 
down to the 19th century no really serious attempt was 
made by any European Power to put down Mediterranean 
piracy. Christians during all this period were frequently 
made galley slaves. The greatest Christian Powers sent 
their consular agents to Algiers or Tunis and made agree- 
ments with the Sultan at Constantinople, but otherwise 
the traders had to look after themselves and to sail in 
company under arms. The one great effort that was 
made in 1571 resulted in the victory of Lepanto, when the 
Venetian fleet, under the command of Philip's half brother, 
Don John of Austria, reinforced by a comparatively small 
number of ships from Grenoa and the Pope and Spain, 
broke the power of the Sultan for a time, but did not clear 
the Mediterranean of Mohammedans. 

1 The corsairs of N. Africa made war on the Christians and raided 
their coasts, sometimes independently of the Sultan to whom they owed 
nominal allegiance, sometimes as his allies. Burke says "The Turk 
cannot govern Egypt and Arabia and Curdistan as he governs Thrace ; 
nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers, which he has at 
Bruse and Smyrna. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He 
governs with a loose rein that he may govern at all." 



SPANISH POWER IN LOMBARDY 9 

The long wars between France and Spain before and 
during the reign of Charles V had largely been fought 
for the possession of Lombardy and Naples, and Spain 
had finally triumphed. In 1559, at Cateau Cambresis, it 
was finally acknowledged that France had no status 
beyond the Alps. Lombardy was now a Spanish province. 
Here was trained the best of the Spanish legions, the 
tercio of Lombardy. There was a certain amount of 
local freedom in Milan, and also in the smaller towns. 
Charles V actually supported the Senate of Milan 
against his own Governor. Philip indeed supported his 
Governor against the Senate, but not so far as to 
create a despotism. The Milanese continued quietly to 
enjoy the protection of their laws and of their Senate. 
It was in the next century that the Lombards suffered 
and wished Philip II alive again, for under him, in 
spite of heavy taxes which barely covered the cost of 
government and from which he drew no profit, and in 
spite of a certain amount of military duty in the cavalry, 
the Milanese preserved their rights. The Hapsburgs 
were greatly concerned by the question how they could 
communicate between Lombardy and Austria. Yenice 
controlling the Adige route up to the Brenner Pass, it 
resulted that a Spanish army, except by the courtesy of 
the Venetian Senate which was neutral and disliked any 
violation of its territory, had to use the Valtellina leading 
up from Lake Como to the very steep and lofty Stelvio 
Pass, by which they reached the Upper Adige and the 
Brenner. It was an inferior and difficult route, but often 
it was a cause of war between the Hapsburgs and their 
enemies, and in later days France paralysed the Spanish 
arms by securing for herself the alliance of the Rhaetian 
Swiss who controlled the north of the Stelvio. 

To the north-west of Lombardy the valley of the Ticino 
leads from the north shore of Lake Maggiore to the 
St Grotthard Pass, and this route was held by the Swiss. 



10 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

They had conquered the present Canton of Ticino, and 
had planted three castles at Bellinzona, a few miles north 
of the lake, so as to control the district of Italy where the 
great highway debouched ; to-day the Ticinese are by race 
and character Italians, and important places in the Canton 
are held by up-country Swiss, but they are personally 
free, whereas in the 16th century they were practically 
slaves. Thus the Swiss confederacy had their means of 
access to Italy. But the ascendancy of the Spaniards in 
Lombardy, and in particular the victory of the Spanish 
arms at Pavia in 1525, checked the further expansion of 
their power. In the days of Philip II the Swiss fought 
as mercenaries only, and were unable to extend their sway 
further into Italy. 

Next to the west, the Duchy of Savoy spread from the 
Lake of Geneva across the main Alps between France and 
Italy into Piedmont. Gradually the Dukes lost the north 
side of the Lake where the Swiss created the Canton of 
Vaud, but they gained more than they lost, for by their 
occupation of Piedmont they controlled the West Alpine 
routes. Here again French and Spaniards were both 
anxious to secure influence; in the days of Philip II 
Savoy was almost a province of Spain, and under 
Louis XIV of France. Often we find the siege of some 
little fort taking a place in history which strikes us as 
being much too important for its size, until we see from 
the map that it was a military post controlling some 
mountain pass. Between France and Spain the Duchy 
of Savoy thrived because of its geographical position. 

The Republic of G-enoa had always been the rival of 
Venice. In the 16th century it was allied to Spain, and 
the great families of the Dorias and Spinolas supplied 
admirals and generals to Spain. It secured a large share 
of such Mediterranean trade as would otherwise have 
gone to Spain. It held most of the Riviera and ruled 
it despotically; many a little Riviera town still has its 



THE SWISS: SAVOY: CENTRAL ITALY 11 

fort by which Genoa in those days held it in subjection. 
It also held the island of Corsica. Commerce in this part 
of Italy came along the coast by water. In many places 
the spurs of the Apennines come down precipitous to the 
sea, and only in the 19th century has the great coast 
road, the Cornice, been successfully engineered. Indeed 
so difficult has it been to lay down a track along the coast 
that the modern railway has only a single line of rails. 
Inland from Genoa passes over the Apennines led to 
Lombardy, and thus by the friendship of Genoa Spain 
secured her line of communication with Milan, just as by 
the Valtellina she had her line up to the Brenner and 
Austria. 

Several of the small duchies, which had in the Middle 
Ages taken the place of the Republics, were still in exist- 
ence, such as Parma and Modena. The dukes were usually 
the faithful henchmen of Spain, and Philip's half-sister 
Margaret married the Duke of Parma. The great city of 
Florence had lost her republic; the family of Medici, 
having overthrown liberty by their enormous wealth, now 
governed as Grand Dukes of Tuscany. In central Italy 
the Popes had extended their power beyond the Patrimony 
of St Peter, that is to say beyond the ring of territory 
near Rome, which more or less corresponds to ancient 
Latium. They held the district of the Marches across the 
Apennines, and the Legations of Bologna and Eerrara up 
to the right bank of the lower Po. 

In the South, the King of Spain held Sicily by virtue 
of an old claim of the House of Aragon that goes back 
some centuries, though the Sicilians protested that they 
accepted the dominion of Spain of their own free will. 
There was ever strife between the royal power and the 
native Sicilians, and it was a land of feuds rather than of 
law. In the Island of Sardinia and in the Kingdom of 
Naples, which were now likewise Spanish, Philip's viceroy 
was far more powerful and more despotic. These three 



12 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

countries were occupied by permanent Spanish garrisons, 
the tercios of Sardinia and Sicily and Naples. 

Spain herself, one would have thought, would have 
benefited by the accession of Philip in place of Charles, 
for Spain was his home. But he meant to be the master 
of his home. The Castilian nobles had already under 
Charles Y become mere passive subjects, cut off from all 
participation in public life. They fell back upon the 
enjoyment of their wealth in their country seats; they 
enjoyed great incomes and had many families dependent 
on them; they passed their time in pomp and luxury, 
which indeed were foreign to the Castilian character and 
had been imported by Charles V into his court. Naturally 
the result of pomp and luxury was debt. Of course there 
were a few energetic Castilian nobles who served the 
King, such as the Duke of Alva, and the lesser nobles 
and hidalgos having lost their feudal rights and privileges 
looked for a livelihood to the King's service or to places 
of trust in the Indies. But the general result of the 
policy of both Charles and Philip was to destroy the 
natural adventuresomeness of the Castilian character, for 
Charles hardly ever kept his court in Castile, and Philip 
lived indeed in Castile, but lived apart and kept his 
nobles aloof from him. It has also to be considered that 
in Castile there were vast numbers of ecclesiastics. When 
a country has such an aristocracy and too many non- 
productive monks and nuns and friars, national life is 
stagnant. There was in Castile a representative assembly, 
the Cortes, but representing only the towns, and under 
Charles and Philip it became a body obedient to the 
royal power, meekly voted subsidies every three years, 
and was in no degree a basis of popular resistance against 
a despotic monarchy. 

Aragon, including Catalonia, had been brought into 
partnership with Castile by the marriage of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, the grandparents of Charles Y, but Aragon 



SPAIN UNDER PHILIP II 13 

always had its own privileges. Under Charles Y these 
privileges were more or less successfully maintained. 
Philip, quite at the end of his reign in 1592, seized his 
opportunity when Aragon rose to protect a certain Perez 
who stood upon his rights as an Aragonese. Chiefly by 
means of bringing the Inquisition over to his side, Philip 
gained his point and broke the spirit of the province. In 
Catalonia, the port of Barcelona had had a glorious past 
as both a naval and a commercial city. It began to 
decline under Charles; it sank into ruin under Philip, 
partly owing to the rivalry of the city of G-enoa, a republic 
which was always favoured by the Spanish monarchs, 
and partly owing to the Turkish ascendancy in the Medi- 
terranean. Yenice on the one side and G-enoa on the 
other defended their trade as best they could, making 
a compromise with the Sultan, even though such a course 
might seem to be undignified. But Spain never properly 
undertook as a Great Power the duty of protecting the 
Mediterranean. 

The aristocracy of Spain under the gloomy rule of 
Philip being deprived of its position and no longer leading 
the nation, and the townsfolk having no vigorous municipal 
life, the nation became more and more stagnant. G-old 
and silver might come from across the Atlantic, but if the 
Spaniards had lost their power to use money profitably 
and to put it to use in the way of trade, it was only 
natural that the wealth which should have been theirs 
should pass to those who had the trading instinct. The 
Netherlander were born tradesmen, and the wealth from 
America went to them. This cannot have been due only 
to the pride and slackness of the Spaniards themselves. 
It was part of Philip's policy of despotism to keep the 
Spaniards down by granting trade privileges to the 
Netherlanders, and in a general way it may be said that 
goods came to Spain only to be reshipped to Flanders. 
Moreover he laid a crushing tax of ten per cent, upon all 



14 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

sales. Therefore under this dead weight Spain went from 
bad to worse. When we add that the revolt of the 
Netherlands was the most important fact of Philip's reign, 
that the war continuing long after his death down to 
1648 exhausted Spain as regards both men and money, it 
is clear that the connection with the Netherlands was 
deadly to Spanish life, and that the King only did hurt to 
his own nation. 

In various ways, by marriage, by conquest, even by 
direct purchase, the counties and duchies of the Nether- 
lands in the 15th century had been grouped together under 
the House of Burgundy 1 , and from his grandmother, Mary 
of Burgundy, the sole heiress of Charles the Bold, Charles V 
held all the low countries as his inheritance. There he 
was popular and was at home as a Fleming, whereas 
Philip, having his home in Spain, was the foreign master. 
Of all the cities of the Netherlands, Antwerp most attracts 
our attention. Situated some miles inland up the deep 
and tidal Scheldt, Antwerp was an ideal centre for the 
redistribution of commerce into the heart of Germany 
and France. The discovery of a new world beyond the 
Atlantic and of a new route by the Cape to India brought 
commerce to Cadiz and Lisbon. The Flemings sailed to 
Cadiz and Lisbon, reshipped the goods and brought them 
to Antwerp. In the Middle Ages the chief port of 
Flanders was Bruges, an inland town, and sufficiently 
served by a canal by which she had access to the North 
Sea. But vessels large enough to weather the Bay of 
Biscay could not enter the canal and had to go up the 
Scheldt. Therefore Bruges is even to-day a mere medieval 
survival, and Antwerp, though she has had an inter- 
mediate period of ruin and decay, has in the last quarter 
of the 19th century become again one of the richest ports 
of all Europe. Thus Philip took over from Charles a 

1 The Duchy of Burgundy reverted on Charles the Bold's death to 
France, but the County of Burgundy came to Spain. 



THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS 15 

great city, in which was concentrated the main trade of 
Europe. There great commercial houses, not only Flemish 
but also German, had their headquarters, for instance 
the F aggers of Augsburg, and they chiefly financed the 
Kings of Spain and France and England. Whoever could 
borrow from the Fuggers and kindred families could 
carry on a war ; whoever could not repay the loans, or at 
any rate pay the interest on the loans, was nationally 
bankrupt and could not make war. To Antwerp came 
from Lisbon bullion and jewels, spices and sugar 1 ; from 
Italy came silks and brocades ; from the Baltic, corn and 
flax and wood; from England, not only wool but also 
cloth, for the Flemings had taught the English not to 
confine themselves to breeding sheep but also to manu- 
facture. We are told that the trade with England rose 
in the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign from a quarter 
of a million to five million ducats, a very wonderful 
development, which at least marks the cleverness of the 
Flemish traders in London; it also goes very far to 
explain why Queen Elizabeth was slow to oppose Philip 
openly and strongly in the Netherlands, and why she, 
a poor sovereign unable to raise a great revenue from 
taxation in England, was able to borrow money from the 
merchants of Antwerp in return for trade privileges. 

Now when we throw our eyes over all Philip's 
dominions, Lombardy, Naples and Sicily, Castile and 
Aragon, the Netherlands, and also the remnant of 

1 The spice trade was of vast importance, encouraged adventure, and 
led to war and rivalry. It is a little difficult to understand why pepper, 
cloves, nutmeg, &c, entered so much into the life of our ancestors, until 
we realise first that they had no roots as winter feed for cattle and there- 
fore killed and salted the carcasses, and secondly that they could not 
freeze meat in hot weather. The spices enabled them to make palatable 
both salted and high meat. At first Portugal, later on Holland and 
England, grew wealthy on the spice trade. The importance of sugar in 
domestic life is obvious and explains the keenness of the rivalry of many 
nations in the West Indies. 



16 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

Burgundy which we know by the name of Franche Comte, 
and when also we know that the Spanish Empire of the 
Indies had been founded, it is almost with a shock that we 
read that Philip was always hard pressed for money. 
Every one of his great undertakings failed. It was partly 
no doubt due to his slowness and continual procrastina- 
tion. He would not let his nobles or his statesmen or 
his generals do anything. Every single detail must be 
sanctioned from his room where he dictated to his 
secretaries in solitary splendour in his new Palace of the 
Escurial. But it may be that his slowness in planning 
a war was due to his consciousness that he could not 
afford a war. We shall find that all his efforts in the 
Netherlands lacked stamina. The Armada that he sent 
against England was not nearly so strong as the Armada 
that he had originally designed. We are thus driven 
back from our first ideas about the riches of the Indies, 
and we simply ask ourselves, Did Philip really draw a 
tremendous revenue from the Indian trade ? This brings 
us to another consideration. Did Drake and other English 
buccaneers really bring home from their raids such vast 
amounts of silver and gold and jewels as fancy has always 
depicted ? The Indian trade in the days of Charles V 
was certainly not very wealthy. The silver mines of 
Potosi in Peru were only discovered in 1545, and were not 
in working order for some time afterwards. And next, 
even if the Indian trade was as rich as fancy paints it, 
it was very largely unprofitable. The precious metals 
arrived, and the King's "fifth," or 20 per cent, share of 
the total, was immediately required for repayment of 
loans. The merchants of the Netherlands or Germany 
had got as security certain places in Spain itself, and 
they profited, while the nation of Spain did not. They 
"cornered" the trade in various articles; for instance 
they trebled the price of quicksilver. They got control 
of the re-export from Spain, also of the export of native 



THE RESOURCES OF SPAIN 17 

Spanish produce, having licences from the Crown which 
the native Spaniards had not got. When a nation, partly 
by its own pride and sloth, partly by its subjection to the 
dead weight of tyranny, does not manage its own trade 
and manufactures and is also pressed by a rigid taxation, 
its apparent wealth goes to foreigners. Thus perhaps we 
can understand the state of affairs when we are told that 
in 1595 the Indian fleet brought to Spain 35 millions of 
ducats, the collective produce of three years, but within a 
single year not a coin of all that treasure remained in 
Spain. And so we are brought to the conclusion that 
Philip's great enterprises failed because he had too many 
plans against the Netherlands, against France, against 
England, while he had not got the money to defray the 
cost 1 . 

We have left the question of military strength. All 
contemporary authorities, Spaniards themselves such as 
Bernardino de Mendoza, Frenchmen such as the Seigneur 
de Brantome, and the Welsh adventurer Roger Williams, 
are at one in praising the superb Spanish infantry — " La 
fleur de toutes les autres nations." The Emperor Charles, 
says Brantome, knew that the issue of his wars depended 
on the lighted matches of his Spanish harquebuses. The 
Spanish veteran troops, the soldados viejos, were real regular 
troops. They date from the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
when under such captains as G-onsalvo of Cordova they 
won victories by their discipline although they had not got 
up-to-date weapons, when in fact they simply fought with 
sword and buckler; but very soon in the Italian wars 
against France the harquebus was introduced, and by the 
time that the Duke of Alva conducted the Spanish regi- 
ments into the Netherlands the musket had been invented, 
a gun with a longer barrel than the harquebus, heavy and 
having to be supported upon a fork or crutch, slow to load 
and awkward to carry, but in the hands of trained soldiers 
1 See Von Eanke, Lectures on Modern Europe. 
M. E. H. 2 



18 EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

very effective. Henceforward the ideal of a Spanish 
general was to have half his foot musketeers, and the 
other half pikemen as a solid mass for defence, and other 
nations copied Spanish methods. They were trained and 
constantly recruited from Spain so that a Spanish force 
was always up to strength, and they were divided into 
tercios, regiments of infantry, which took their name from 
the districts where they were trained and were kept in 
garrison. Philip inherited the tercios of Lombardy, Naples, 
Sardinia, Sicily, and G-oletta. When Tunis was lost the 
tercio of G-oletta was broken up. The remaining four, 
when combined for active service, were between 8000 and 
9000 strong, but if weak in numbers they were intensely 
proud, conscious of their strength, and animated by an 
overpowering spirit of camaraderie. The Spanish cavalry 
was very good, but had not got the reputation of the 
infantry, and indeed young Spanish nobles eager for 
military fame preferred to join the infantry. The speci- 
ality of the Spanish horse was the use of the carbine 
or pistol fired from the saddle. Their method was to trot 
towards the enemy, fire, swing aside to right or left, and 
retire to reload whilst giving room to the second line to 
do the same. In an army of any considerable strength 
perhaps one-third, but more usually one-fifth, of the 
soldiers were native Spaniards. The rest would be 
Italians, Walloons 1 , Burgundians, trained more or less in 
Spanish style, and perhaps Germans who adhered to their 
own national methods. For instance in 1586 Alexander, 
Duke of Parma, proposed for the invasion of England an 
army of 30,000 infantry, including only 6000 Spaniards ; 
and in 1578 Don John had in his army 4000 Spaniards 
out of a total of 20,000. But small as were their numbers 
they acted as leaven to an army and made a victory sure ; 
in fact they would put the finishing touch to a battle just 

1 Inhabitants of the French-speaking provinces of the S.E. Nether- 
lands. 



THE SPANISH ARMY 19 

in the same way as did Napoleon's Old G-uard. A King 
of France at this period had a small number of very- 
gallant but entirely untrustworthy cavalry supplied by 
the nobility of France, and was forced to enlist thousands 
of Swiss foot who were certainly good and trustworthy, 
and it may be other thousands of Germans who were 
untrustworthy. Queen Elizabeth could only raise a militia 
from the counties of England, untrained and unorganised, 
liable to die off through the horrible ignorance of the 
period on matters of sanitary science. Thus we can 
understand that, had Philip's hands been free, and had 
he been able to pay and use this small number of choice 
Spanish old soldiers, he might have subjected Europe to 
his will, even as Napoleon did. But even Spaniards who 
were not paid would not fight. Proud as they were of 
their discipline in face of the enemy, they were ready to 
mutiny, and on one celebrated occasion they had the rich 
city of Antwerp absolutely at their mercy 1 . 

1 See Colonel E. M. Lloyd, History of Infantry. 



2—2 



CHAPTER II 

PHILIP II AND THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

BEFORE we enter into the details of Philip's reign 
it will be profitable to consider the last war between 
Charles V and the French, which is typical of many wars 
between Germany and France, and only affected Spain 
indirectly. King Henry II took advantage of the pressure 
of the Turks upon Austria, and of the disunion in Germany 
which the Reformation had caused, to make alliance with 
Maurice, Elector of Saxony. Henry II himself was a 
persecutor of Protestants in France, and Maurice was a 
Lutheran, but we shall find this inconsistency always 
present ; Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV did the same 
thing. Charles barely saved himself by flight from Inns- 
bruck when Maurice tried to capture him by a sudden 
assault. The French occupied the three bishoprics of 
Lorraine, Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Somewhat later Philip 
married Mary Tudor and so brought England into the 
contest, with a disastrous result — or rather it was thought 
to be disastrous at the time — viz. the loss of Calais. 
Charles V shortly recovered from his troubles and laid 
siege, though uselessly, to Metz. After his abdication 
Philip's troops won two victories on the Flemish frontier 
at St Quentin and Gravelines, and thus a way was made 
for a treaty, the Peace of Cateau Cambresis, which seemed 
likely to terminate the struggle for the time being. By it 
France withdrew altogether from Italy and Savoy, and 
on his side Philip allowed the three bishoprics of Lorraine 
to remain in French hands. Elizabeth was now on our 
throne and made an effort through her envoys to regain 



1559 STATE OF PARTIES IN FRANCE 21 

Calais, but unsuccessfully, and indeed Cecil appears to 
have considered that the possession of a French port 
would really be a source of weakness to England. 

Philip is now definitely the centre of the picture, and 
this means that the fortunes of Spain rather than of 
Germany are our chief consideration. Curiously enough 
he began his reign with a quarrel with Pope Paul IV. It 
is not at all unusual to find a despot, who is likewise 
a persecutor of Protestants, having such an enmity against 
some Pope; Louis XIY is another instance in point. 
Philip's sole idea was to be an autocrat, to crush out 
heresy in Spain, to support the Inquisition at all costs, 
and therefore if the Pope should resent the power of the 
Inquisition, then the Most Catholic King and the Head of 
the Catholic Faith would be at variance. 

Henry II of France died at the end of 1559. His son 
Francis II, the husband of Mary Stuart, succeeded, and, 
under the influence of his wife's relations, the Guises, it 
seemed that religious questions would alone occupy his 
attention, i.e. suppression of heresy both in France and in 
Scotland. But here we meet with a problem that has 
always to be remembered : the Cuises were Lorrainers 
and therefore foreigners. However, Francis II reigned 
only for one year and was succeeded by the feeble-minded 
Charles IX, his next brother; and the Italian Queen- 
Mother, Catharine of Medici, had great influence over 
Charles IX. There appeared three parties in France : the 
out-and-out Catholics, headed by the Guises; the inde- 
pendent Catholic faction of Montmorency, the Constable ; 
and the Huguenots led by Admiral Coligny, and the two 
brothers, Antony of Bourbon and Louis of Conde, who 
belonged to the junior branch of the royal family and 
were "princes of the blood." If the Catholics had a 
measure of unpopularity because their leaders were from 
Lorraine, the Huguenots suffered from their relations with 
Elizabeth, who took the opportunity to throw an English 



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1565 EARLY POLICY OF PHILIP II 23 

garrison into Le Havre. This turned Montmorency to 
the side of the G-uises. Now Philip by the Treaty of 
Cateau Cambresis had married the youthful Elizabeth, 
sister of Charles IX and daughter of Catharine. In 1565 
it was given out that the young Queen of Spain would 
visit her mother at Bayonne, and she was accompanied to 
the interview by the Duke of Alva. There is no doubt 
that Alva, as Philip's trusted representative, meant to 
persuade the French Queen to renounce political jealousies 
and to devote all her attention to the suppression of 
heresy. That Catharine answered Alva with fair words 
seems quite possible, but that she meant to pledge herself 
to the cause of the Roman Church is hardly likely, 
though Alva seemed to think that she had bound herself 
to do so. 

It is just now that Philip did one of the worst acts 
of his whole reign. In the South of Spain there lived not 
only Moors of pure blood, but likewise thousands of mixed 
blood, generally known as Moriscos. A certain amount of 
common sense, a compromise with his Catholic conscience, 
would have enabled him to secure the loyalty of these 
people for ever. But he began to persecute them, first in 
little matters, interfering for instance with their dress and 
prohibiting the use of any language but their own ; then 
came brutal penalties and, naturally enough, a revolt. 
There were slaughter and atrocities upon both sides. 
Philip finally called upon his half-brother, Don John of 
Austria, to undertake the pacification of Granada. Don 
John advocated clemency, but the forces of bigotry were 
too strong, and before 1570 practically the whole of the 
Morisco population of Andalusia had either been enslaved 
or massacred or exiled. 

But before the Moriscos had been finally crushed, the 
troubles began in the Netherlands. Philip's first Regent 
was his half-sister, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, and she, 
like almost every other agent who was used for a time 



24 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

and afterwards thrown aside by Philip, was in favour of 
a policy of compromise and leniency. But Philip had 
supplied her with a Spanish army and had established the 
Inquisition, though by a trick of language it was not 
actually called the Spanish Inquisition. William the 
Silent, Prince of Orange, now comes upon the stage; he 
was a German from Nassau, and was only titular Prince 
of Orange. He had been a favourite of Charles Y, but he 
had taken hitherto no determined stand upon religious 
questions. Like Catharine of France, Elizabeth of England, 
and many others, he was an opportunist. He may have 
fashioned his policy according to the needs of the moment, 
and Catholic historians are never tired of pointing out 
that his public language at this date was entirely in favour 
of Catholicism. But the whole life of the man leads us to 
conclude that, though he began as an Imperialist and 
Roman Catholic, his love of political liberty brought him 
to consider more closely the question of religious freedom, 
and that in genuine earnest he became more and more 
Protestant until finally he was a decided Calvinist. But 
when the troubles first began in Antwerp and elsewhere 
in 1566, when excited crowds of extreme Calvinists in- 
dulged in anarchy and image-breaking, Orange was 
certainly not an instigator. At the same time he saw 
that, though vehement excess might give Philip a handle 
for fierce persecution, there was the national question 
behind. Also he had nothing to do with the boasting and 
drinking, in which men like Count Brederode, the buffoon 
of the Netherlands, indulged. A large number of the 
national party met at Brussels and went in procession to 
the palace of the Regent, Margaret, to put forward their 
claim to be free from the Spanish army and the Spanish 
Inquisition. It is said that a courtier whispered in her 
ear, "Madame, they are only a heap of beggars." Any- 
how the name caught on, and that night at a banquet 
which degenerated into an orgy of intoxication Brederode 



1566 TROUBLES IN THE NETHERLANDS 25 

and his friends donned the bowl and wallet of the pro- 
fessional beggars, and adopted the nickname which always 
stuck to the Netherlander rebels. 

But it was one thing to protest and to drink. It was 
a different thing to resist Philip in earnest. In 1567 
appeared the Duke of Alva with his four Spanish tercios, 
ready with them to crush any military movement that 
might be made by Orange and his party, who were unable 
to oppose to him any force except German mercenaries. 
Margaret retired from the Netherlands, and Alva ruled 
and initiated the reign of blood. For the time the Nether- 
landers were powerless, but then began Alva's insane 
policy of taxation. From Spain he imported the ten per 
cent, tax upon all commercial transactions. This struck 
a blow at the merchants at Antwerp and the great cities, 
which goaded them into rebellion when neither politics 
nor religion would have moved them. And it was a policy 
most fatal to Philip himself, for the very bankers of the 
Flemish cities who declared themselves ruined by the 
imposition of " the tenth penny " were the very men upon 
whom he depended for his loans. For the time being, 
however, there was but talk and excitement, while the 
scaffold was kept busy. Loyal Flemish nobles, in par- 
ticular the Counts of Egmont and Horn, whose sole crime 
was protest, were beheaded. The Netherlands seemed far 
from being likely to obtain freedom. It is true that 
on one occasion Louis of Nassau, the younger brother 
of William of Orange, lured one of Alva's veteran 
Spanish regiments into ambush, but the success was but 
momentary. 

Our attention is suddenly called off to the Mediter- 
ranean. The Turks made another great move forward 
by an attack upon the Venetian island of Cyprus in 1570. 
A federation was formed against them. Neither Philip 
nor the Pope, much less the Republic of Genoa, had any 
fellow feeling for Venice ; but it was clear that Venice 



26 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

could not alone bear the brunt of a new Turkish war. 
Like every confederacy, this one took a long time to form 
and, when formed, was too late to save the Venetian 
garrisons in Cyprus. But formed at last it was, and in 
1571 a mighty fleet of galleys was put to sea and won 
a decisive victory off Lepanto, in the mouth of the gulf of 
Corinth. It is worth while to consider this battle, for it 
was the last sea-fight of its kind. From time immemorial 
the warship of the Mediterranean had been the rowed 
galley, and sailing ships were for commerce or at most 
mere auxiliaries in battle. 160 feet long, 25 oars to the 
side, three or four or five slaves chained to each oar, 
a crew of some 20 free but non-effective hands, some 
60 officers and soldiers, two or three auxiliary masts with 
lateen sails, — such is the picture of a typical galley. 
Though galleys were not powerful according to more 
modern ideas, on the comparatively still waters of the 
Mediterranean they made up by mobility for what they 
lacked in power, for they could be manoeuvred as easily 
as a regiment of cavalry. But the introduction of gun- 
powder had far more importance at sea than on land. It 
was clear that when the gun became the deciding factor 
in war, it could not be properly carried by a vessel of 
which the broadside was needed for the oars; at most 
three guns could be carried in the bows. A new ship had 
indeed been invented, the galeazza, which, as in all periods 
of transition in warfare, was a compromise. It was larger 
than a galley and its whole crew, freemen and slaves 
combined, amounted to 1000 men. There were 30 oars 
to a side; the oarsmen were covered in by a deck on 
which was a tier of guns; but the main strength was 
in two lofty castles in the bows and stern, built to hold 
several tiers of guns. At Lepanto the main fleets on each 
side were of galleys, and on the Christian side there was 
a centre of 62, two wings of 54 each, and a reserve of 30 ; 
and half a dozen galeazzas were thrown forward in pairs 



1 57 1 THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO 27 

to distract and worry the Turks so as to allow the galleys 
to charge with success. Most of the ships were Venetian, 
and the commander-in-chief was Don John of Austria. 
One point in the battle is noticeable. One of the Christian 
wings swerved aside because the Turks threatened to out- 
flank it, and another division of Turks immediately tried 
to strike into the gap thus formed between the wing and 
the centre. Immediately the reserve of 30 galleys, com- 
manded by a celebrated and capable sailor, the Duke of 
Santa Cruz, rowed with mathematical accuracy into the 
threatened gap and restored the line 1 . 

From a political point of view the battle of Lepanto 
only checked the Turks for the time being. Philip was 
much too slow and too hard pressed for money to consent 
to a vigorous offensive next year. The Venetians on their 
side felt that they had to maintain their trade at all costs; 
so they gave up all idea of reconquering Cyprus, made 
peace with the Sultan, and continued to carry on such 
trade as yet remained to them under the goodwill of the 
Mohammedan Powers. If we look at the naval result of 
Lepanto, we find that a new ship was invented which 
should take the place of the galeazza, and this was the 
genuine galleon, afterwards so conspicuous in the great 
Armada. It was shaped like the galeazza, low in the 
waist and with two towering castles, but it was not 
intended to be rowed. It had the misfortune that it was 
extremely unweatherly, and in an unfavourable wind 
simply drifted. 

We return to the Netherlands. Very many of the 
Flemings fled to England, taking their knowledge of 
handicraft to benefit the foreigner who received them, 
and thus giving to England a definite step forward as 
a manufacturing country. On the other hand the Hol- 
landers and Zealanders from the west side of the Zuider 
Zee and the islands at the estuary of the Rhine and 
1 See Julian Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy. 



28 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

Meuse were not merchants and manufacturers, but chiefly 
poor fishermen and farmers. Also they were fiercer 
Protestants than the Flemings. Love for their religious 
doctrines, and doubtless in the case of many of them 
a mere love of adventure, induced them to put to sea. 
They are always known as the Water Beggars. One 
of their chief leaders was William de la Marck, " a wild 
sanguinary licentious noble, wearing his hair and beard 
unshorn, until the death of his relative Egmont should 
have been expiated, a worthy descendant of the Wild 
Boar of Ardennes/' It is difficult to draw the line 
between patriotic adventure and piracy, and these men, 
whose wild spirit ultimately was the source of the success of 
the Dutch Republic, must have seemed to contemporaries 
to have been utterly lawless. They put to sea under 
letters of marque either from the Prince of Orange or 
from Admiral Coligny, for there was an understanding 
between the Protestants of France and those of Holland. 
The Spanish trade between Cadiz and Antwerp gave 
plenty of opportunity for privateering, but privateering 
is poor work when there is no place at which the plunder 
can be sold, and where the ships can fill up with food 
and water. Queen Elizabeth at first allowed the water- 
beggars to use the port of Dover. In 1572 she suddenly 
ordered them to quit Dover and, pressed by downright 
starvation, they attacked Brill upon their own coast, 
overawed the Spanish garrison, and then proceeded to 
seize Flushing and other places. The policy of Elizabeth 
has been criticised. Did she do this simply to please Philip 
at a time when Philip seemed to be dangerous to her, so 
that he might not be ready to support Mary Stuart ? or 
had the descent upon Brill been devised months previously, 
and did she merely make a pretence of ordering them 
away from Dover so that she might not be suspected 
of conniving at their attack? "The accidental nature 
of the capture of Brill by the sea rover de la Marck on 



THE SEIZURE OF BRILL 29 

April 1, 1572, which, begot the Dutch Republic, has pro- 
bably been exaggerated. Elizabeth had allowed Dutch 
freebooters the shelter of her ports, and la Marck used 
Dover as a regular basis of operations; and, while she issued 
public proclamations against him and all other pirates, 
she privately granted him safe-conducts. In November 
1571 he was being greatly caressed by the English who, 
wrote G-uerau, the Spanish Ambassador, at one blow with 
their practices in France will plunge that country into 
dreadful war. Subsequently Gruerau stated that he had 
information of the design on Brill six months before it 
was effected ; that he had duly advised the Duke of Alva 
at the time; and that the place had been reconnoitred 
before he left England in January 1572. In June Mont- 
morency told Elizabeth to her face that la Marck had 
left Dover to seize Brill with her consent and aid, and she 
admitted the charge. Finally, William of Orange thanked 
her warmly for her efficient aid to la Marck in taking and 
holding Brill, and a Spaniard averred that la Marck's 
expulsion from Dover was all a deceitful trick to cover 
the taking of Brill. It was no sooner occupied than 
Elizabeth prepared to profit by the occasion, and Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert was allowed to take 1200 English 
across the sea 1 ." 

This was the beginning of English interference in the 
Netherlands. Elizabeth did not openly send royal troops, 
and made pretence to Philip that she was still his friend. 
Motley, the whole way through his celebrated history, 
continually sneers at Elizabeth and accuses her of double 
dealing and slowness in helping her fellow Protestants. 
But she knew what she was doing. She was not ready to 
defy Spain openly. She meant by every trick at her 
disposal to pose as the friend of Spain, and she disliked 
all rebels, even Protestant rebels. At the same time she 

1 Pollard, The Political History of England (Longmans), Vol. vi, 
pp. 331, 332. 



30 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

pretended that she could not control her subjects, and. 
that both the sea adventurers like Drake and Hawkins, 
and the land adventurers such as Roger Williams and 
John Norris, were beyond her control. What Motley 
could never understand was that England was not at that 
time ready for open war. The county militias were mere 
gatherings of untrained men, and the royal navy was 
inadequate in numbers, so that the longer Elizabeth post- 
poned her defiance of Spain the stronger she was likely 
to be when the inevitable struggle came. The ships had 
not been built in 1572 which bore the brunt of the fight 
against the Armada in 1588 \ for the Eoyal Commission on 
the Navy, which discussed the defence of England and 
produced the means whereby England was adequately 
defended when the great Armada came, did not sit till 
1583. Moreover Elizabeth was desperately poor. For 
the sake of her popularity she dared not levy heavy taxes 
or demand forced loans, however much she might domineer 
and dictate to her parliaments. She maintained her court 
and state chiefly by paying long visits of several weeks 
at a time to one nobleman or another ; she had a private 
understanding with Drake and Hawkins, and secretly 
invested money in their buccaneering ventures, so as to 
add an honest penny to the royal income. Therefore for 
her to have recklessly defied Spain at the wrong time 
would have been fatal. But in the meanwhile the sailors 
were gaining experience of the Atlantic, even if Drake 
himself did not bring home such vast piles of booty as 
the popular imagination loves to think that he did, and 
adventurous soldiers of the type of Roger Williams were 
learning the art of war under the leadership of Orange 
and his officers. We are so accustomed to think of the 
England of the 18th century continually maintaining 
thousands of mercenaries with which to fight France or 

1 Accurately, ten ships of over 200 tons built between 1570 and 1587, 
and eight ships rebuilt. 



i 5 72 THE MASSACRE OF ST BARTHOLOMEW 31 

the rebel Americans, that it is with an effort that we 
acknowledge that in the days of Elizabeth, and also of 
James I and Charles I, it was the Englishman who was 
the most valuable mercenary, and the States General of 
the Netherlands paid him. From 1572 onwards there 
were always English volunteers or mercenaries in the 
Netherlands. 

Meanwhile in France, in spite of their losses in the 
earlier civil wars between 1560 and 1566, the Huguenots 
had been gaining ground. The policy of Catharine was 
not to persecute the Huguenots as Alva thought that she 
had promised, but to play them off against the Gruises. 
There were two main divisions of Huguenots : the nobles 
who often changed sides as did Antony and his more 
celebrated son, Henry of Navarre, nobles who probably 
saw in religious controversy an opportunity of regaining 
their feudal power which the Crown had been steadily 
weakening for the past century; and, secondly, the 
burghers of certain towns, not only La Rochelle and 
Toulouse, though the west and the south of France were 
the two great Huguenot strongholds, but also Rouen and 
Orleans. The Calvinistic creed was not acceptable to the 
majority of the light-hearted French; it was altogether 
too stern; but the burgher class had leanings towards 
Calvinism in what we might almost call a non-national 
mood. In the course of the civil wars Rouen and Orleans 
fell into Catholic hands, and Huguenotism was there 
stamped out, while La Rochelle was always the citadel of 
the Reformed Faith. The result of Catharine's oppor- 
tunism was to create a party of politiques, and in alliance 
with this party Coligny got such ascendancy over the 
half-witted Charles IX that he seemed virtually to govern 
France. Then Catharine took fright after the seizure of 
Brill, regained her influence over her son, and suddenly 
persuaded him that Coligny was at the head of a vast 
conspiracy. She stirred up in him a savage feeling, and 



32 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

soon steps were taken and the result was the celebrated. 
Massacre of St Bartholomew. 

The country affected by the massacre was the Nether- 
lands rather than France. The seizure of Brill and of 
Flushing had been followed by an outbreak throughout 
the whole land, and in particular the border town of 
Mons in Hainault had been seized by young Louis of 
Nassau with Huguenot help, and he was expecting 
Huguenot reinforcements. The massacre deprived him 
of the expected aid, and he had to capitulate to Alva 
upon honourable terms, just at the moment when it seemed 
as if he would be successful in spreading the revolt in the 
southern Netherlands. 

Yet though deprived of Huguenot aid for the time 
being, the Netherlands of the north never lost ground. 
Alva might capture Haarlem and the Spanish soldiers 
might there vent their fury, but Leyden defied his 
successor though reduced to the last gasp. What with 
the defiant Hollander and Zealander water-beggars 
destroying the Spanish commerce, Elizabeth sending 
volunteers, and Huguenots threatening the border, Alva 
felt the task too strong for him and demanded his recall. 
The successor, Bequesens, was unable to do much more, 
and in 1576 Philip had to send up his brother Don John, 
the pacifier of the Moors and the victor of Lepanto. 

When Bequesens was governor of the Netherlands the 
grievances of the Spanish soldiers came to a head. For 
a long time past Philip had not paid them, and yet his 
hold over the Netherlanders depended entirely upon them. 
Coolly and under good discipline they first seized upon 
Mechlin, and afterwards upon Antwerp itself. They 
systematically looted and massacred, and Motley must 
be quite right in saying this was the first of the various 
causes that ruined the greatest commercial city of Europe 
of the day. " It was called the Spanish Fury, by which 
dread name it has been known for ages. The city which 



1576 EVENTS IN THE NETHERLANDS 33 

had been a world of wealth and splendour was changed 
to a charnel-house, and from that hour its commercial 
prosperity was blasted. Other causes had silently girdled 
the yet green and nourishing tree, but the Spanish Fury 
was the fire which consumed it to ashes 1 ." 

The result of the sack of Antwerp was that the Roman 
Catholics of the South Netherlands were thrown into the 
arms of the Prince of Orange. They did not indeed wish 
to break away from Philip, for the source of their wealth 
was mostly the carrying trade from Spain, but they were 
determined to insist upon the departure of the Spanish 
soldiers. On the 8th of November, 1576, the States General, 
the Assembly of the United Netherlanders, drew up a 
document known as the Pacification of Ghent ; it was a 
real edict of unity, and recognised the Reformed Faith in 
Holland and Zealand, yet acknowledged Philip as king. 
Such was the state of affairs when Don John arrived. 
For the time being he was quite powerless and had to 
accept the Pacification. Borrowing large sums of money 
at reckless rates of interest, and thus satisfying the Spanish 
soldiers, he withdrew them for a time. But the Union 
lasted for only a short time. Back came the Spaniards 
and other troops under the command of Alexander of 
Parma, son of Margaret and therefore nephew of Philip, 
a hero already distinguished at Lepanto as much almost 
as Don John. A motley army got together by the States 
General was scattered without much trouble at G-emblours 
in 1578. 

The great difficulty in the way of Orange was that 
the original rebels of Holland and Zealand were utterly 
different in character from the Flemings and the Walloons. 
Not only Holland and Zealand, but five other provinces of 
the north, Utrecht, Gruelderland, Overyssel, Friesland, and 
Grroningen, formed in 1579 a confederacy known as the 
Union of Utrecht. They were the Seven United Provinces, 
1 Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, Part iv. chap. 5. 
M. E. H. 3 



34 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

or United States, but by a natural mistake we call the 
whole country Holland from the biggest and strongest 
member; by a further mistake we call the inhabitants 
Dutch. Their power was always based on the sea, and, 
as the years of successful rebellion passed by, from being 
poor refugee fishermen the Dutch, after the seizure of 
Brill, grew to be the richest ocean-traders of Europe. 
Inland dwelt industrious farmers or boers. They were 
almost all ardent Protestants, mostly Calvinists. They 
could defend their walled towns stubbornly, and by 
cutting their dykes could bring the sea to assist them, 
whether now against the Spaniards, or a century later 
against Louis XIV. But they had no taste for land- 
fighting, and for troops to face the Spaniards they 
depended on foreign mercenaries and volunteer ad- 
venturers. William of Orange was the Stadtholder, let 
us say the chief administrator and leader, of Holland 
itself and Zealand, but not of all the seven, and originally 
he held the office for Philip ; in 1581 he formally disowned 
Philip's sovereignty. 

But, on the other hand, the Netherlanders of the south, 
Flemings, Brabanters, Hainaulters, French-speaking Wal- 
loons of the south-east, were manufacturers and bankers 
as well as merchants. They did not really wish to break 
with Spain, for they valued the trade. They were mostly 
Catholics ; though it has to be remembered that some of 
the fiercest image-breaking Calvinists were to be found at 
one time or another at Antwerp and Ghent, these men 
were not the solid burghers whose wealth made them 
important. The leaders were Catholics and had no wish 
to see Orange too powerful. Consequently the unity 
brought about for a time by the atrocities of the Spaniards, 
and expressed by the Pacification of Ghent, could not 
last. Orange did his best to find some prince who would 
be acceptable to both north and south. More than one 
German was proposed, but the choice of a Frenchman 



1584 MURDER OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE 35 

seemed to be more promising. Yile as was Francis of 
Anjou and Alencon, the youngest son of Catharine of 
Medici, the help of France at such a crisis was too 
valuable to be missed, and Orange persuaded the States 
General to accept him. Moreover Elizabeth, — who as far 
back as 1559 saw her chief danger in the alliance of 
France with Scotland in support of Mary Stuart, — was 
now drawing near to France, and seemed even likely to 
risk losing her popularity in England by marrying him. 
Anjou reached Antwerp in 1582. But he had no con- 
ception of the duties of the high station offered to him 
and of the greatness of his chances as sovereign of the 
Netherlands. He tried to loot on the Spanish model. 
The Antwerpers were not yet so far sunk as to submit to 
Anjou, who had not the military capacity of the Spanish 
mutineers of 1576 ; they promptly barricaded their streets, 
and forced him to surrender. He returned in disgrace to 
France, and of course Elizabeth at once repudiated him ; 
soon he died. 

Before Anjou's escapade Don John had retired, to die 
unhappily after a life of early promise. Alexander of 
Parma was now governor, and proved to be the ablest of 
all Philip's generals. He played upon the feeling of the 
southern Netherlanders against Orange, and easily occu- 
pied the Walloon provinces. Gradually he was winning 
his way towards Antwerp and Brussels. The Seven United 
Provinces, in their inability to combine with the others, 
would have made Orange their sovereign, but suddenly 
he was assassinated in 1584. The situation was at once 
changed. There was no one capable of filling the place 
of Orange, and his son was young. Would Alexander be 
able to occupy the cities and provinces one by one, profit- 
ing by their disunion and lack of a leader? Elizabeth 
was now moved to take up a decided policy. Ever since 
1572 there had been a steady stream of English volunteers 
ready to fight for the Netherlanders, but now she thought 

3—2 



36 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

it necessary to do something more openly. Her sea-rovers 
had shown her the way to defy Spain, and already she 
was strong enough to refuse to give Philip satisfaction for 
Drake's raid in the Pacific. Thus she felt herself ready 
to oppose him openly, and her new fleet was also ready. 
While Orange lived she could not take decided steps; 
this may seem mean, but there is no such thing as grati- 
tude in politics, and had Elizabeth helped Orange at an 
earlier date and enabled the Netherlanders to win com- 
plete independence from Spanish rule, there would surely 
have been a conflict between defenders and defended. It 
was best for her to keep aloof until her aid was urgently 
required. So in 1585 she made a regular treaty with the 
States. She would provide royal troops on condition that 
certain towns were yielded up to her, and these are known 
as the "cautionary" towns, Brill, Flushing, and Ramekins. 
Philip Sidney was put in command of the garrisons, and 
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was the Queen's Com- 
mander-in-Chief. 

The negotiations took time, and before the effect of 
English help could be felt, and whilst the Netherlanders 
had no leader to succeed William of Orange, Alexander 
besieged and finally captured Antwerp. He had not a 
force large enough to blockade the city on all sides, but 
the country was flooded and he held central positions on 
the dykes amidst the submerged fields, and a short way 
down stream from Antwerp he built a great bridge of 
boats over the Scheldt to bar the approach of the Dutch 
water-beggars. The Antwerpers made a desperate attempt 
to break down Alexander's bridge. A vessel was filled 
up with bags of gunpowder and paving stones, and a 
mechanical genius of the city inserted a clock, and, when 
the vessel fell down with the ebbing tide towards the 
bridge, the clockwork went off accurately, the gunpowder 
was exploded, and Parma's bridge with some hundreds of 
his best Spanish soldiers was hurled into the air. But the 



1585 ANTWERP TAKEN BY PARMA 37 

water-beggars had already appeared and had failed to 
capture the bridge and had retreated beyond recall, so 
that there were no ships to take advantage and sail up to 
the besieged city. In a wonderful way Alexander repaired 
the moral of his army, rebuilt his bridge, and ultimately 
forced Antwerp to surrender. From this time onwards 
her destiny was fixed. The Dutch always held the mouth 
of the river, and built there several strong forts as well as 
Flushing. No commercial or fighting ship could pass up 
or down stream, and the result was that the city, which of 
all cities was in the finest position for European trade, 
languished and starved under Spanish rule. Louis XI Y 
and Napoleon in turn coveted Flanders for France, and 
would have made Antwerp a great centre in case of 
success, but it was a cardinal point in the policy of both 
England and Holland from this time onwards that Antwerp 
should be in a perpetual state of blockade ; it was only in 
the last part of the nineteenth century that all restrictions 
were withdrawn, and a man would not have to be so very 
old at the present date to contrast the present city with 
its new docks and its flourishing commerce with the, one 
might almost say, paltry port of 1870. 

Elizabeth must have been quite aware of what would 
happen from her policy when, in defiance of Philip, she 
knighted Drake and when she sent her troops to Holland. 
But the culminating point was reached when she was 
persuaded into signing the death warrant of Mary Stuart. 
This is not the place to enter into the controversy as to 
whether Elizabeth played the hypocrite when, after Mary's 
execution, she vented her wrath upon her secretaries, Wal- 
singham and Davison, who persuaded her to give her 
signature. But one cannot help feeling that she had given 
it only under pressure, that she meant to revoke it, and 
that the death warrant was hurried off to Fotheringhay 
and Mary was executed before Elizabeth had an oppor- 
tunity at the last moment to change her mind. She saw, 



38 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

what apparently Cecil did not see, that the presence of 
Mary in England was indeed a danger to her because 
she was the centre of assassination plots, and assassina- 
tion was in the air, but that on the other hand Mary 
was a hostage, and that Philip could not fight England 
in the cause of Mary and of the Roman Church whilst 
Mary herself was closely confined. Whatever the ex- 
planation of Elizabeth's conduct, it was now too late 
to hesitate. She had the ships which had been newly 
built under the eye of John Hawkins, who had entered 
her service as her chief naval architect, and it only 
remained to decide whether the policy of Drake or 
the policy of Elizabeth herself should be followed when 
the Armada, which Philip had planned to send to sea 
and which the Duke of Santa Cruz was organising, 
should be ready to sail. In 1587 Drake gave the first 
practical proof that the theory of seeking the enemy upon 
the enemy's side of the sea was the right one. It was 
not only that he sailed into Cadiz harbour and inflicted 
tremendous damage upon the portion of the Armada 
collected there, but also, by hovering off Cape St Vincent, 
he completely prevented the various units of the Armada 
from collecting together. He had no naval base where to 
fill up his ships with water and provisions; he had no 
ally ; but he did exactly what the great admirals of two 
centuries later were able to do under more favourable 
circumstances, that is, he made the enemy's coast Eng- 
land's frontier. In this connection one of the most 
important points to be considered is that the crown of 
Portugal suddenly became vacant and was claimed by 
Philip, and Alva was sent with a Spanish army to overrun 
the country and secure Lisbon. It was promised that 
Portugal and the Portuguese Indies should be ruled by 
Portuguese in Philip's name and not by Spaniards, but 
everyone could see that Philip would in time treat Portugal 
as a conquered province, even as he treated Aragon or 



1587 ELIZABETH DEFIES PHILIP 39 

Naples. In the war the result was that, instead of the 
English finding in Lisbon a neutral or a friendly port 
which would be the basis of a naval attack upon Spain, 
the harbour and the ships and seamen of the Portuguese 
navy were now on the side of Spain. Therefore Drake's 
ability to keep the sea and to paralyse the Armada in 
1587 was a great feat. It is well known that next year 
he wished to repeat his experiment and catch the Armada 
before it crossed the Bay of Biscay, and it was Elizabeth 
who compelled our fleet to wait off Plymouth. 

The story of the Armada has been retold for us by 
modern historians. The old-fashioned idea that English- 
men rose in all their might to defend their faith and 
country, and poured out in their little ships from every 
port to harass and vex the great Spanish hulks, that the 
fire-ships of Calais were the invention of the Queen her- 
self, and that finally came a lucky wind which blew the 
Armada into the North Sea and round the shores of Scot- 
land, has now to be given up. The best ships, upon which 
fell the brunt of the fighting, were Queen's ships. A few 
vessels of tolerable size were provided by Drake himself 
and his adventurous friends and by the city of London, 
but the multitude of small vessels, even a tyro can under- 
stand, could not carry heavy guns sufficient to batter the 
Armada. They may have contributed to make a display 
in the eyes of the Spaniards, but the work was done by 
the couple of dozen Queen's ships. And moreover they 
were not very small. The " little Revenge " was Drake's 
flagship, though most people only know of her as the hero 
of the fight against the fifty-three, and she carried a crew 
of 250 and some twenty heavy guns. The best of the 
Spanish ships were really Portuguese, genuine ships of war 
and manned by trained crews. There were likewise some 
good Italian ships, but the Spaniards indeed themselves 
had never been a naval race, and the so-called squadrons 
of Andalusia and Yalentia were merely composed of 



40 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

traders in Philip's service and their crews were certainly 
not experienced. The galleon could not tack against the 
wind. On our side fore-and-aft rigging had been invented 
by Fletcher of Rye in the reign of Henry VIII. Various 
other inventions had been worked out by Drake and 
Hawkins, and the result was that the Queen's ships could 
tack against the wind. A writer at the end of the reign 
says : " There are two manner of built ships, the one with 
a flush deck fore and aft, sunk and low in the water ; the 
other lofty and high, charged with a half-deck, forecastle, 
and copper-ridge heads 1 ." Various seamen of the time 
preferred one or other of these classes. Walter Raleigh 
wrote that he preferred the flush-decked class; the ships 
were more nimble and would carry guns as great as the 
other class did, and, though such guns were fewer, the 
ships could turn and fire more often and more steadily. 
Lastly one must mention that Hawkins covered the keels 
of his ships with boards of elm closely nailed over with 
layers of felt, his own device against barnacles and other 
things that would make the timbers rot, a device which 
was not beaten until the invention of copper-sheathing 
was made at the end of the 18th century. 

When the Armada, having drifted up to Calais, was 
scared out of the roadstead by the fire-ships and drifted 
aimlessly into the North Sea, then took place the pitched 
battle off the coast of Gravelines which decided the cam- 
paign. It would seem that the English captains, who 
were divided into four squadrons, got their ships into line 
as best they could, and having the wind sailed in under 
the Spanish galleons, delivered their broadsides as quickly 
as possible, then hauled out and tacked so as to repeat with 
the other broadside. Admiral Winter wrote the following 

1 A copper-ridge head we should call a bulkhead, and the advantage 
of a forecastle is that if the enemy were to board in the waist of the ship 
then from the bulkheads a deadly volley could be fired upon them. See 
Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, passim. 



1588 THE ENGLISH AND SPANISH NAYIES 41 

to Walsingliam : " I deliver it unto your honour upon the 
credit of a poor gentleman that out of my ship there were 
shot 500 shot of demi-cannon, culverin and demi-culverin, 
and when I was furthest off in discharging any of the 
pieces I was not out of shot of their harquebus, and most 
times within speech one of another." This would mean 
that on an average each of his 20 guns was let off twenty- 
five times in the day. On all our ships the gunners were 
trained men and the science of gunnery had been worked 
out elaborately. Of course at this date in a land battle 
the solid shot of the typical cannon of the day did very 
little harm indeed. But at sea, when there was a large 
mark to aim at and the guns were fired at harquebus 
range, they must have done very considerable damage. 
But we can hardly compare them to the guns of Nelson's 
day, though the statement has been made that Nelson's 
guns were only 25 per cent, better than Drake's. A broad- 
side from the "Victory" at Trafalgar had a smashing effect, 
for almost all the guns were doubly loaded and some 
trebly, and they had been most carefully made and tested. 
The demi-cannon mentioned by Winter was a 30-pounder 
with a 6|-inch or 7-inch bore, the culverin a 17-pounder 
with a 5-inch or 5J-inch bore, and the demi-culverin 
a 9-pounder with a 4|-inch bore. 

Next year was made a serious attempt to retaliate 
upon Philip. The campaign was well planned. Drake's 
fleet was to escort the army of Sir John Norris, a veteran 
of the Netherlander wars, who was to land near Lisbon, 
summon the Portuguese to arms, and advance on that 
city. But Drake was ever a difficult man to work with. 
The army was landed too far from Lisbon, the fleet did 
not co-operate further, hardly any Portuguese rose, the 
Englishmen were untrained and ill-disciplined, and the 
expedition resulted in abject failure. Drake lost much of 
his reputation. Later when he and Hawkins fitted out 
their last retaliatory expedition against the West Indies, 



42 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

they both died out there, and yellow fever made the ex- - 
pedition quite profitless. It is another of the superstitions 
of Elizabeth's reign that Drake and his compeers year 
after year crossed the Atlantic and came home with their 
ships deeply sunk in the water with a vast weight of 
Spanish gold and silver, and that Philip's Atlantic trade 
was absolutely ruined by them. It would seem that in 
truth the only voyage which was really profitable to 
Drake was the cruise around the world, 1577 — 80; on his 
return the recorded value of his spoil was £55,000, and it 
is thought that perhaps £120,000 more had been secretly 
got rid of by him before he rendered his account to the 
Queen. Perhaps his plunder on that occasion would 
represent one million of money of our day, though it is 
true that Philip claimed that the damage done was nine 
times as much. On the other hand it has been mentioned 
already that in 1595 Philip's fleet brought from the West 
Indies to Cadiz 35 millions of ducats, the produce of some 
three years. Taking the ducat at about 2s. 6d. and multi- 
plying by six to give the value of the present day, we can 
calculate how much was Philip's income from America; 
and the fact that this 35 millions reached Spain safely 
shows that the English buccaneers had not destroyed his 
Indian revenue. 

The last attack made upon Cadiz by Howard and 
Essex gave the finishing touch to Philip's hopes of 
equipping a second Armada. 

Alexander of Parma had not approved of the invasion 
of England at all. He had his definite work to subdue 
the Netherlands, and, had he been able in 1588 to carry 
over his entire army from Flanders to England, what he 
had already done in the Netherlands would probably have 
been undone; even the fact of having to wait for the 
Armada made him lose the whole of the year 1588. Philip 
was trying to do too much with the scanty means at his 
disposal, but he was always doing that, and now we find 



PARMA AND CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE 43 

him acting in just the same way towards France. The 
French Civil Wars had come to such a pass that it ap- 
peared that Spanish interference was absolutely required. 
There was nobody but Alexander to give the aid of Spain, 
and so the third task was put upon him of fighting Henry 
of Navarre. In France towards the end of the eighties 
we come to the two last stages of the long-drawn agony 
of her religious feuds. It is called the War of the Three 
Henries. There was Henry III the King, a mere puppet 
with neither intellect nor morals; there was Henry of 
Guise, the Catholic champion, who meant to put forward 
his own claim for the throne of France in case of the 
death of King Henry ; there was Henry of Navarre, who 
had already once recanted and turned Catholic at the 
time of the Bartholomew, but had come back to the 
Huguenot camp, and who was the son of Antony of 
Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre 1 . He is 
known in French history as le grand Beamais, Beam 
being the portion of the Kingdom of Navarre north of the 
Pyrenees, and he had been born at Pau, its capital. He 
was of course an opportunist ; he trimmed his sails to the 
wind of the moment. He was a born fighter, blunt and 
genial, and able to put up with the blows of fate. His 
intimates adored him, and he just suited the French 
character. 

In January 1585 had been formed the League of 
French Catholics in definite alliance with Spain. Henry 
of Guise was supported at the head of the League by his 
brothers, the Cardinal of Guise and the Duke of Mayenne, 
and the Pope issued a bull in their favour. Their avowed 
object was to secure the crown for a Catholic on the 
death of King Henry III. The King was shifty, and in- 
clined in turn to the League, which acted as if it had 
sovereign rights, and to Henry of Navarre. At one time 
the two Henries, France and Navarre, advanced on Paris. 
1 See pedigree, p. 22. 



44 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

But treachery and assassination were favourite weapons 
of low minds, in this as in other ages. Henry of Guise was 
lured to a conference at Blois in 1588 and was murdered ; 
then Henry of France was murdered in 1589 in revenge, 
and at last the male line of Catharine was extinct. The 
way was now clear for the third Henry, both of France 
by descent from the main line of French kings, and of 
Navarre. There was no one else of blood royal. A certain 
Cardinal of Bourbon was thought of, but died; besides 
him there were only Philip of Spain by right of his wife 
Elizabeth in violation of the much cherished Salic Law, 
or the young Duke of Guise, son of the murdered Henry, 
or Mayenne, in defiance of any right at all. 

There were jealousies amongst the Catholic leaders 
themselves, and their cause was damaged by their reliance 
on foreigners, Spaniard and Lorrainer. Many Catholic 
nobles followed Henry of Navarre. But even the famous 
victory at Ivry in 1590 over Mayenne did not secure for 
him the crown. Paris and Kouen and other towns were 
staunchly Catholic, and would not have even a patriot to 
be King to save them from the foreigner at the price of 
accepting a Huguenot. Philip now ordered Alexander of 
Parma to turn his back on the Netherlands, and to take 
his Spanish army to the relief of Paris in 1590 and of 
Bouen in 1592. The two great captains never fought a 
pitched battle. The impetuous Bearnais would have liked 
to come to blows, but Alexander was cautious and dared 
not risk the lives of his valuable Spaniards who could not 
be replaced. Alexander triumphed so far that the crown 
of France seemed quite out of Henry's grasp. Then Henry 
made his great coup, recanted for the second time, became 
Catholic, and said that Paris was worth a mass; the 
city opened its gates and Alexander's work was undone. 
Alexander died at the end of 1592. 

And so we have come to the end of a critical chapter 
in the history of France and Europe. After the brood of 



1594 HENRY IV BECOMES KING OF FRANCE 45 

Catharine of Medici at last a real man was on the throne 
of France, a man who was no bigot but a true Frenchman, 
who, by the Edict of Nantes, gave complete toleration to 
the Huguenot lords and Huguenot cities, who was himself 
a Catholic and at the same time the ally of the Protestant 
Queen of England and the Protestant Netherlanders. 
With the advent of Henry of Navarre to the throne of 
France begins the period of the decisive interference of 
France in affairs outside her borders. There was a 
momentary pause when he was assassinated in 1610, but 
finally Richelieu took up the work. On the death of 
Richelieu and during the minority of Louis XIV there 
was another pause, and then Louis XIV in his manhood 
assured the ascendancy of France, though he completely 
spoilt it by revoking his grandfather's Edict of Nantes. 

Therefore the triumph of Henry IY was just the final 
touch which ensured the failure of Philip. For indeed 
Philip had failed, however strong Spain might still appear 
to be to contemporaries. Of course the steady opposition 
of the Dutch, based on their sea power, was the greatest 
cause of the ultimate exhaustion of Spain. The Eng- 
lish contributed their share, especially by defeating the 
Armada, for by so doing they drew Alexander off from 
his proper task; the men and the money wasted in vain 
against us would have been invaluable to him against the 
Dutch. But neither the continuous draining of Spanish 
resources in the Netherlands, nor the shrewd blows struck 
by English sailors, should allow us to slight the work of 
Henry IY. He, too, in 1590 and 1592, spoilt Alexander's 
prospects by bringing him from the Netherlands into 
France ; he was the open enemy of Spain and ally of the 
Dutch down to the Treaty of Vervins in 1598, and even 
then helped them by money and sympathy; he foiled 
Spain by getting the better of the League and Mayenne 
its chief. As we look back to Philip's and Alva's attempt 
at Bayonne in 1565 to secure the co-operation of Catharine 



46 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN 

in putting down heresy in both countries, to the Huguenot 
support of the Dutch in spite of the terrible set-back 
caused by the Bartholomew, and to the episode of Anjou's 
attempt to take the sovereignty of the Netherlands, we 
have to acknowledge that French affairs deeply influenced 
all Philip's plans. A French crown devoted to Catholicism 
would have caused civil wars in France worse than those 
which actually took place, and then Philip would have 
been less distracted from the Netherlands. Henry's final 
triumph made the ultimate success of the Dutch quite 
safe. The critical years were those from 1584 to 1592 
when Alexander seemed to be on the point of victory, 
William of Orange dead and Maurice too young, and the 
Dutch for the time leaderless, and include the years of 
the Armada and of Ivry. Henry safe on the throne of 
France and Alexander dead, the cause of the Dutch 
was won. 



CHAPTER III 

THE GROWTH OF FRANCE. THE THIRTY 
YEARS' WAR 

WITH the death of Philip in 1598, and of Elizabeth in 
1603, the stage is filled with new characters. In the same 
year 1598, Henry IV made peace with Spain at Vervins. 
Very soon after his accession James I made peace with 
Spain, and we cannot call him either short-sighted or 
unpatriotic in doing so. Naval power is an excellent 
defence to a country, but only a direct offensive on the 
enemy's soil can bring a war of such magnitude to a 
decisive conclusion. As long as England had no standing 
army, as long as untrained men were swept into the 
militia, put into uniforms and sent abroad untrained; in 
fact as long as the military state of England was as 
depicted by Shakespeare in the plays of Henry IV and 
Henry V, with fraudulent musters, bribes accepted from 
the strong men who did not want to serve, mere gaol 
sweepings and weaklings swept into the ranks, braggarts 
of the Bardolph type abounding, — and there can be no 
doubt that in those plays Shakespeare was describing 
what he actually saw, — serious war was impossible, and 
neither Elizabeth nor James I dared to make the smallest 
attempt to tax the nation for a standing national army. 
Not only did James make peace with Spain and even go 
so far as to wish to marry each of his sons in turn to 
a Spanish Infanta, but also he came to terms with the 



48 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

Dutch. For a sum of money down he sold the three - 
cautionary towns, and henceforward there was no dis- 
guise; the Englishmen who still served in thousands in 
the armies of the States were no longer royal troops 
but downright mercenaries. They were organised and 
trained scientifically, and at this time the Dutch army 
rather than the Spanish was the model for Europe. 

The Stadtholder was Maurice of Orange and Nassau, the 
second son of the murdered William the Silent, now grown 
to manhood. He was fighting a war which still was severe 
and exhausting even for the conquerors. On the death of 
Alexander of Parma, the Netherlands were formed into a 
separate Government for Philip's daughter Isabella and 
her husband Albert, an Austrian Archduke. They con- 
ciliated the Walloon and Flemish Provinces, granted 
freedom of worship, and a certain measure of municipal 
freedom in the towns. Under them neither Walloons nor 
Flemings wished to pass under the rule of the House of 
Orange, and so the present line between Holland and 
Belgium was fixed. The great military undertaking 
of the early years of the 17th century was the siege of 
Ostend. Albert Spinola, a Genoese noble and soldier of 
fortune, was the able commander of the Spaniards and 
Catholic Netherlanders, and he set himself down to 
capture Ostend, for it was of vital importance to the 
Netherlands to have a port, as Antwerp was blockaded 
and useless. After three years' siege Ostend fell, but in 
those three years Spinola had lost so many men that it 
was almost a disastrous conquest in the long run. The 
rest of the war down to the truce of 1609, and then again 
from 1619 onwards, became an affair of sieges along the 
border and was chiefly concentrated round Bergen-op- 
Zoom, Breda, Bois-le-duc (Hertogenbosch), Maestricht. 
Well disciplined and well led, the Dutch and their mer- 
cenaries, Englishmen, Scots, Frenchmen, and Germans, 
devoted themselves to the science of sieges and the 



PROSPERITY OF THE DUTCH 49 

defence of a limited frontier. By sea their trade grew 
at the expense of both Spain and Portugal, and indeed 
the curious thing is that Portugal suffered most, yet the 
original enemy was Spain only, and Portugal was dragged 
into the war simply because Philip II annexed it. When 
Dutch ships were unable to go to Lisbon for the spices 
that found so ready a market in every land, the natural 
result was that they went direct to the Spice Islands of 
the East Indies, and there they ruined the trade not of 
Spain but of Portugal. The English followed, and the 
two nations then became rivals for what in the 16th century 
had been a Portuguese monopoly. 

For the last sixty years the history of G-ermany has 
lacked interest. The Treaty of Augsburg of 1555 was 
a compromise, and every compromise lasts for just as long 
a period as the contracting parties choose to keep it. In 
the early 17th century the Jesuits gained new influence 
in Austria, and the Roman Catholic sovereigns thought 
themselves strong enough to break the treaty. The 
question was whether the States where Church lands 
had been secularised could be compelled to restore them. 
In fact the Counter-Reformation, in Austria and Bavaria 
in particular, was ready to attack the Reformation. In 
1610 a general conflagration nearly burst out. Two 
German duchies adjoining the Netherlands, Cleves and 
Jiilich, fell vacant. The claimants were Protestant, the 
inhabitants Catholic. Neither the Emperor nor the 
Church would willingly let the duchies pass to heretics 
and the lands be secularised, and the Emperor claimed 
the right to administer them while vacant. To check 
the imperial pretension Henry IY made alliance with 
Maurice of Orange, and only his murder prevented a 
great and general war ; and when the Thirty Years' War 
did begin France took no part at first, as Louis XIII was 
young and Richelieu not yet established in power. 

The actual occasion was the election of Frederick, 
M. e. h. 4 



50 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

Elector Palatine 1 and a Calvinist, to the throne of Bohemia 
in 1619. The Catholics had already nominated Ferdinand 
of Styria, cousin and heir of the Emperor, and himself 
shortly afterwards elected to be Emperor 2 . Thus the 
struggle was precipitated, but would have occurred sooner 
or later. The point of interest for us is that Frederick was 
married to Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of James I, 
the object of the adoring allegiance of so many of the 
poets and statesmen of the time. But James could do 
nothing to help the new King and Queen of Bohemia. 
He had no force that he could send inland, and, clever 
talker as he was, he could not by mere words prevent 
Spain from taking the Catholic side. The first part of 
the Thirty Years' War is the Bohemian period. Frederick 
was in 1620 crushed at the battle of the White Mountain 
and beaten out of Bohemia, and then out of his own 
Palatinate. The Emperor Ferdinand declared that the 
electoral vote was to be transferred from the Palatinate 

1 Frederick ruled the Lower Palatinate on the middle Khine with 
Heidelberg as his capital. The Upper Palatinate was on the upper Main. 

2 HOUSE OF HAPSBUKG. 

Ferdinand I, brother of Charles V = daughter of Ladislas, King of 
Emp. 1556 — 64 Hungary and Bohemia 



Maximilian II Charles, Duke of Austria and Styria 

Emp. d. 1576 



Eudolf II Matthias Anne Albert Ferdinand II 

Emp. d. 1612 Emp. d. 1619 4th wife Governor of Emp. 1619—37 

of the Netherlands, 
Philip II married 

daughter Ferdinand III 

of Philip II Emp. 1637—57 
Philip III 
of Spain d. 1621 

Leopold I 
Emp. 1658—1705 



i6i 9 THE WAR IN BOHEMIA 51 

to Bavaria, whose Duke belonged to a younger branch of 
the same family. 

But the religious passions spread far beyond Bohemia. 
There were two main Catholic parties in Germany with 
divergent interests. There was the party of the Emperor 
who looked to the interests of Austria and the House of 
Hapsburg; and there was the league of minor Catholic 
States, the Duke of Bavaria at their head, Count Tilly 
their General, and Spain their ally, whose chief idea was 
to win back to the Church the secularised Church lands 
which had been covered by the Treaty of Augsburg. 
Tilly's army was strong, and advancing through central 
and towards northern Germany he seemed likely to crush 
all the petty Protestant princes. The Spaniards occupied 
the Lower Palatinate. In the meanwhile the two great 
Lutheran Electors, George William of Brandenburg and 
John George of Saxony, held aloof. They were pro- 
nounced Protestants, but Frederick was a Calvinist ; also 
they did not want to disunite the Empire by a great 
civil religious war on a large scale. As they would do 
nothing, it rested with Christian of Denmark to become 
the champion of the Protestant cause, for he held 
the secularised archbishoprics of Bremen, Yerden, and 
Lubeck. 

The fortunes of the second period of the Thirty Years' 
War depended therefore entirely upon the position of the 
Baltic powers. The King of Denmark commanded the 
passage of the Sound, and held Norway in subjection, 
thus controlling all the commerce between the Swedish, 
North German, and Russian ports on the one side, and 
Holland and England on the other. The raison d'etre, so 
to speak, of Denmark was the guardianship of the Sound. 
The cautious Dutch were willing enough to pay tolls to the 
Danish Government for their ships, which went in search 
of the corn and timber, hemp and skins, which have ever 
been the main articles of commerce in the Baltic. But 

4—2 



52 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

there was another power to be considered. Sweden 
always felt aggrieved at being cnt off from the North 
Sea by the Danish power. The question therefore was : 
would the three Protestant countries, Sweden, Denmark, 
and Holland, make a confederation to help the German 
Protestants, and would England join ? Or would Christian 
of Denmark have to fight entirely upon his own responsi- 
bility ? 

Now in the first place Holland could do very little to 
help. The truce of 1609 was broken and a new war broke 
out between Holland and Spain, a war marked by exactly 
the same features that we have noticed before, — the defence 
of a land frontier, and the sieges of cities on the one side 
or on the other. Frederick Henry of Orange continued 
year after year to fight Spinola, even as his brother Maurice 
had done, with an admirably trained and scientific army 
of mercenaries, Englishmen and Scots, Frenchmen and 
Germans. 

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden would have joined in 
the struggle if he had been allowed to. He was at war 
against Poland, for the King of Poland was his kinsman 
and the Roman Catholic claimant to the Kingdom of 
Sweden. Therefore if he were to take part in a German 
war he required some sort of security against Poland. He 
likewise required some remission of Danish tolls upon 
Swedish ships, and he claimed the right to be commander- 
in-chief of the Confederacy if it was formed. Christian of 
Denmark could not grant his terms, and so he fell out. 

Before James I of England died he had been so greatly 
offended by the refusal of the King of Spain to marry the 
Infanta to Charles that he was willing for war against 
Spain. The Duke of Buckingham had come home from 
Madrid with Charles bent upon vengeance against Spain, 
because this refusal appeared to him in the light of a 
personal insult. So Charles I came to our throne with 
a distinct policy of taking a part in the Thirty Years' 



1625 HOPES OF A PROTESTANT LEAGUE 53 

War as the ally of Christian 1 . He married Henrietta 
Maria, the sister of Louis XIII, and certainly hoped to 
draw France into the alliance. Now it is so much the 
custom to sneer at our earlier Stuarts and to consider 
them mere men of straw in comparison with Elizabeth 
who came before them, or with Cromwell who came after 
them, that one has to make somewhat of an effort to view 
the state of affairs from Charles' own point of view. Firstly 
he seriously wished to help the Protestant cause and his 
uncle Christian. Next he made a real effort, according 
to his powers, to induce the Lord-Lieutenants of the 
counties to raise useful soldiers in the militia, compel them 
to have up-to-date arms and train them, instead of holding 
a farcical inspection once a year. It is impossible to read 
the orders which he sent without seeing that his wishes 
were neither tyrannical nor impracticable. At the same 
time he wished the cavalry of various counties to be col- 
lected in some central place for joint training. But he 
was met with a quiet and stubborn refusal to carry out 
his orders. If he had been the typical despot of tradition 
he might have set the Star Chamber in motion against 
the offenders, but he was unable as a constitutional 
sovereign to do more than he did. Then as regards 
money, the very party who had always cried out against 
the wicked Catholics of Spain, that is the Puritans, had 
control of the House of Commons and refused to grant 
Charles supplies, and all that he could do for the help 
of Christian was to sell a few jewels. The picture of 
Puritan England refusing to let their King help brother 
Protestants in Germany, while they haggled over a vote 
of a few thousands in the House of Commons, is not one 
which Macaulay presents to us, but it is a true picture all 
the same. The justification of these men would be that 
Charles had married a Roman Catholic wife, though they 

1 Christian IV was brother of Anne of Denmark, and therefore Charles 
I's uncle. 



54 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

forgot that she was the daughter of Henry of Navarre, ' 
that the Edict of Nantes was in force in France, and 
that Richelieu was quite ready to join the Confederacy 
on Christian's side. Another justification was that 
Buckingham was high in favour, and one must confess 
that here we see how it was that Charles failed, for 
Buckingham no historian has ever presented otherwise 
than as an incompetent and gaudy trifler. 

The next point is that, just as Richelieu was on the 
point of committing France to the war, the Huguenots of 
La Rochelle were mad enough to revolt against the Crown 
of France. Of course Richelieu could do nothing to help 
the German Protestants whilst the French Protestants 
were in open rebellion, and therefore it is remarkable to 
see how the Protestants of both France and England 
damaged the cause of the Protestants of Germany. 

Therefore the second period of the war, which begins 
just about the time when Charles I succeeded to our 
throne, has as its chief figure Christian of Denmark. He 
was supported by the lower Saxon States, and Ernest 
Mansfield, a soldier of fortune, had collected a scratch 
army of volunteers and mercenaries. Besides this, in the 
far east of Hungary Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Tran- 
sylvania, won some successes and was distracting the 
Emperor's attention. On the other side was the army 
of the Catholic League headed by Tilly. We now find 
the Emperor giving a special commission to that wonder- 
ful and mysterious character Wallenstein, a nobleman 
descended from a German family settled in Bohemia, 
whose real name was Albert von Waldstein. He had 
already shown distinction as a leader of mercenaries, 
and the Emperor made a bargain with him to raise 
50,000 men as the Imperial General with the rank of 
Duke of Friedland. In the war Tilly completely broke 
up the power of Christian at the battle of Lutter in 1626, 
and overran all lower Saxony. Wallenstein scattered the 



i6 2 6 THE DANISH PERIOD 55 

army of Mansfield and overran Silesia. For the next 
three years the state of the conquered country was very 
bad indeed, and the Emperor felt himself strong enough 
to issue an Edict of Restitution, by which he seized for 
the Church all bishoprics and lands which had become 
Protestant before the Treaty of Augsburg. Christian was 
in abject terror and made a humiliating peace. 

In the midst of military triumphs the Catholic party 
now definitely split into two. The German princes of the 
Catholic League, especially the Duke of Bavaria, who had 
the support of Spain, had no other view than the restora- 
tion of the Roman Church; but on the other hand the 
Emperor was aiming at the expansion of the power of the 
House of Hapsburg, and one cannot but acknowledge that 
he was in the right, for if ever the much distracted Germany 
was to be united it must be under the strongest Grerman 
power, that is to say under the Hapsburgs alone. But 
then, by identifying himself so strongly with the Counter- 
Reformation, and being so largely under the control of the 
Jesuits, Ferdinand completely failed to carry through his 
policy, and to other Germans it seemed that he was merely 
trying to advance the interests of Austria in particular 
and not Germany as a whole. In these years of triumph 
he had the great design of pushing his power to the 
shores of the Baltic. He made Wallenstein Admiral of 
the Empire, and it would seem that on the collapse of the 
power of Denmark he aimed at controlling the trade of 
the Baltic. This frightened the German Cities of the 
Hanseatic League ; more than that, it frightened Gustavus 
of Sweden. Therefore when Wallenstein laid siege in 1628 
to Stralsund, which was the key to the possession of the 
Baltic coast, not only the dejected Christian of Denmark 
plucked up courage to throw in supplies and troops, but 
also Gustavus was called upon the scene. Wallenstein 
swore that he would have Stralsund and assaulted it with 
fierce keenness, but a corps of Swedes and of Scots in the 



56 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

Swedish service was thrown into the place and made it 
safe. This was the turning point of the war. 

Indirectly Richelieu, looking carefully after the in- 
terests of France, helped the Protestant cause to some 
extent by interfering in Italy. He wished to prevent 
Savoy from being the mere vassal of Spain ; he supported 
as heir to the Duchy of Mantua a claimant who had a 
French mother and French sympathies ; he tried to bar 
access to the Valtellina to the Spaniards in Lombardy. 
He was, in fact, causing the French once more to assert 
themselves on an old battle-ground. In doing this he had 
an eye to geographical position, Savoy commanding the 
western Alps, Mantua the neck between Lake Garda and 
the Po, and the Valtellina the line of communication from 
Lombardy to the Brenner and therefore to G-ermany. 
French success in the Valtellina crippled the Spaniards 
of Lombardy, and both a Spanish army under the able 
Spinola and an Imperial army under one of Wallenstein's 
officers had to be called away from Germany; consequently 
the first efforts of Gustavus in the Thirty Years' War were 
much influenced. Moreover Richelieu was instrumental in 
bringing about a truce between Gustavus and Poland. 

Gustavus, during the last few years carrying on his 
war against the King of Poland, his own cousin, had 
been training his native Swedish troops. His army was 
exceedingly well disciplined and trained, and his two 
years of triumphant marching and fighting in Germany 
mark the next epoch in military history. Gustavus dis- 
carded the old method of fighting in great masses, and 
therein he differed from both the Spanish and the German 
commanders. He was in favour of rapid marches which 
disconcerted his enemies, and was entirely opposed to the 
Dutch method of reducing war to a series of sieges, a 
method useful enough on the limited frontier between 
the Independent and the Spanish Netherlands, but out 
of place in this war which spread over the wide area of 



THE POWER OF GUSTAVUS 57 

well-nigh, the whole of Germany. He was the first of the 
modern commanders who trusted to a direct charge of 
horse in place of skirmishing methods. His ideal was for 
his cavalry to be interlaced with musketeers, so as to 
shake the enemy with their shot, and then he would order 
the charge at a trot with the naked sword. He altogether 
revolutionised the method of handling artillery, and intro- 
duced light field-guns in place of the great fixed batteries 
of heavy guns then so dear to the German mind. His 
infantry he arrayed in longer and thinner lines and in 
smaller units than the Germans; he made the musket 
lighter and more efficient, and got rid of the crutch on 
which it was fired; but he still kept the proportion of 
half musketeers and half pikemen. The bulk of his troops 
were native Swedes, but it can hardly be imagined that his 
own small and poor kingdom could supply sufficient men 
for war on a large scale, and he had numbers of Scots in 
his service and Germans also, but he trained them on the 
Swedish method. The Scots were particularly attracted 
towards his service, whereas such Englishmen as wished 
to fight, whether for the sake of adventure or of religion, 
still preferred to serve the Stadtholder of Holland. 

Gustavus began his career quietly in 1630 with the 
invasion of various places upon the coast of Pomerania 
and West Prussia that he might obtain, to use his own 
language, a bastion, that is to say, a basis on the coast 
from which he could strike securely inland. When he 
wished to push forward from his bastion inland in 1631, — 
we note by way of parenthesis that he was the first to 
adopt the method of fighting right through the winter 
instead of going into winter quarters, for the hardy 
Swedes made light of the cold of a German winter, — he 
was foiled for the time being by the extreme obstinacy of 
George William, Elector of Brandenburg, who, though a 
Lutheran Protestant, refused to let him march through 
Brandenburg territory. John George, Elector of Saxony, 



58 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

was equally obstinate. These two powerful Electors, in 
spite of their religious feelings, did not like to see a 
foreigner on German soil. Matters were critical when the 
great city of Magdeburg declared in favour of Gustavus. 
Either the King of Sweden would violate the rights of 
neutrality in Brandenburg so as to save Magdeburg, and 
would thereby offend other Lutheran Powers, or he would 
have to submit to the mortification of seeing Magdeburg 
conquered when his presence in Germany was the sole 
reason for Magdeburg's revolt. Unluckily, while the 
negotiations with George William were going on, Tilly 
stormed the town and the usual massacre took place 1 . 
One German city had declared itself on Gustavus's side, 
and that one city had been destroyed. So far therefore 
the King of Sweden seemed to have failed, but he was 
now put upon his mettle, and he threatened George 
William with his direct enmity if he persisted in remain- 
ing neutral, and then, but too late, Brandenburg joined the 
Protestant side. Next John George of Saxony, frightened 
by the fate of Magdeburg, was drawn out of his state of 
neutrality, and Gustavus had therefore an excuse for 
pushing southwards. After a good deal of manoeuvring 
and counter-manoeuvring, he and Tilly met face to face 
at Breitenf eld, a short distance north of Leipzig, where the 
new Swedish formation triumphed completely. Tilly's 
army was not merely beaten; it was annihilated. 

The rest of the year saw Gustavus pushing westwards 
through central Germany and down the line of the Main 
to the Rhine. In or near the valley of the Main were several 
great ecclesiastical estates, the bishopric of Bamberg, the 
bishopric of Wurzburg, the archbishopric of Mainz, and 

1 A massacre when the blood of the assailants is hot is common in 
history; Alexander at Maestricht and Tilly at Magdeburg have their 
Protestant parallel in Cromwell at Basing House and Drogheda. Welling- 
ton was unable to control his men at Badajoz. In fact military rather 
than religious madness causes such scenes. 



1 63 1-2 GUSTAVUS IN GERMANY 59 

so on, so that the country was known as the " Priests' 
Alley." Here then G-ustavus brought the horrors of 
war upon the Catholics, and so relieved the distressed 
Protestants of Lower Saxony upon whom had fallen the 
brunt of misfortune previously. Not that G-ustavus de- 
liberately plundered and massacred as Tilly had done, 
but he demanded subsidies and fines and brought home 
the reality of war to the Catholics, surely though not 
cruelly. The winter of 1631 — 32 saw him with his court 
at Mainz or Frankfort alternately. He partly relieved 
the Palatinate from its Spanish garrisons, and for the 
time being the Catholic League was prostrate. 

During 1631, while G-ustavus was moving against Tilly 
and the Catholic League, the Emperor and Wallenstein 
had been comparatively quiet. Now that G-ustavus was 
at the height of his triumph a new commission had to be 
given to Wallenstein. He was to make war entirely upon 
his own responsibility, and have absolute power of nomi- 
nating officers and disposing of lands confiscated from 
enemies and rebels. Such was Ferdinand's distress that, 
to stem the tide of Swedish victories, he was forced to 
make this incredible bargain. In 1632 G-ustavus invaded 
Bavaria, assured Nuremberg of his protection and alli- 
ance, — for a great independent city of that type required 
assurance that it would not be left in the lurch as 
Magdeburg had been the previous year, — and finally he 
penetrated to Augsburg, the very home of Lutheranism, 
where he was enthusiastically received. Tilly was once 
more beaten and died of his wounds. But then Wallen- 
stein came upon the scene with his new army and enjoying 
his new powers. Wallenstein threatened Nuremberg, 
and G-ustavus hastened back to defend it. Wallenstein 
occupied a position upon high ground and refused to be 
drawn into a battle. G-ustavus occupied Nuremberg and 
tried to lure Wallenstein out on to the open. The army 
on each side was at about its greatest as regards numbers, 



60 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

some 60,000 to 70,000 strong, and therefore the policy of 
waiting resolved itself into the question as to which could 
feed itself longest. The light cavalry of Wallenstein, 
the Croats and Hussars from the Slavonic part of the 
Austrian dominions, were born plunderers and utterly 
pitiless in their methods. They managed to sweep in 
more victuals than Gustavus' s scouts, and in consequence 
starvation seemed to threaten the Swedish army first, let 
alone that there was a plague in the city of Nuremberg. 
Therefore it was Gustavus who had to move first, and he 
assaulted Wallenstein' s entrenched lines with his entire 
force and, amid scenes of terrible carnage, he was beaten 
back. Consequently he had to abandon Nuremberg and 
retreat towards the north. Wallenstein was very nearly 
as hard pressed for victuals as Gustavus and, having 
suffered almost as much in the assault on his lines, he 
likewise drew off from Nuremberg; but the honours of 
war were with him, for Gustavus had moved away first, 
and the triumphant Swedes were checked. 

Later in the same year the rivals met for the last time 
in Saxony. John George resorted to his old game of 
neutrality, and the Saxon commander-in-chief, Count 
Arnheim, was very much under Wallenstein' s influence; 
thus it seemed as if Saxony would change sides. There- 
fore Gustavus hastened towards Saxony, and there he met 
Wallenstein at Liitzen, half a dozen miles to the south of 
Leipzig. On November 6th, in the midst of most desperate 
fighting during a foggy day, Gustavus, separated from his 
cavalry, was recognised and killed. But his army, led by 
Bernard of Weimar, was roused to such a pitch of fury 
that it drove in Wallenstein's very much superior numbers, 
and so the year 1632 ended with the death of the great 
Protestant champion and the annihilation of Wallenstein's 
unique army. Fifteen months later, in February 1634, 
the Emperor found that a general of such overpowering 
importance was no longer useful to him, and by a 



1 6 3 2 THE DEATH OF GUSTAVUS 61 

miserable conspiracy he procured the assassination of 
Wallenstein. 

The last sixteen years of the war, 1633 — 48, entirely 
lack interest. The native Swedish veterans of Gustavus 
died off , and their places could not be filled. The so-called 
Swedish armies were now largely composed of mercenaries 
of all types trained on the Swedish method. The disci- 
pline was relaxed, and horrible tales of cruelty were told 
of the Swedes just as of the Spaniards or the G-ermans of 
Tilly's old army. If any name can be applied to the 
last stage of the war, one would feel inclined to call it 
the French period. In fact, it was Bichelieu who kept 
the war alive where otherwise sheer exhaustion would 
have produced peace, and French armies appeared in 
Germany. And Germany suffered horribly, Catholics and 
Protestants alike, at the hands of both friends and foes. 
The war even dragged on for a few years after the death 
of both Louis XIII and Richelieu. It was ended in 1648 
by treaties drawn up at Osnabruck and Munster, but we 
usually talk about the Treaty of Westphalia. Religious 
toleration was secured and the old doctrine was established 
— Cujus regio ejus re^gio— owing to the exhaustion upon 
both sides. Austria's gain was the control of Bohemia, 
where the war had begun, now purged of Protestantism. 
France gained Alsace and absolute right to Metz, Verdun 
and Toul, the three bishoprics of Lorraine ; but the main 
triumph of France was that she had interfered so skilfully 
in German matters as to make disunited Germany even 
more disunited. Sweden gained her bastion, viz. parts of 
Pomerania and Mecklenburg, Bremen and Verden. The 
Elector of Brandenburg secured the rest of Pomerania and 
the mid-German bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt. 
The Duke of Bavaria, in whose interests, one might almost 
say, the war had been waged, gained definitely the Upper 
Palatinate and recognition as an Elector. The son of 
Frederick, the former Elector Palatine, regained the Lower 



i-^MM 







The Peace of Westphalia 



THE DUTCH AT SEA 63 

Palatinate ; and thus there were now eight Electors. The 
sacred number of seven no longer existing a ninth was 
later created, and the Duke of Brunswick became Elector 
of Hanover in 1692. 

Meanwhile the dreary war between the Dutch and the 
Spaniards had been fought to a finish, and in 1648 Spain 
formally recognised the United Provinces as a Sovereign 
state. It was a war, as noticed previously, of sieges of 
fortresses along the border. The Dutch never allowed 
themselves to look away from home, and Frederick Henry 
of Orange with his foreign brigades made siege-craft a 
fine art. But the Spaniards had interests elsewhere, and 
helped the Catholic League in Germany. Spinola, the 
clever Genoese general, was called away to the Palatinate, 
thence to Italy to combat Richelieu's war policy 1 , and in 
Italy he died. By sea the native Dutch navy reduced 
the Spanish naval and commercial power to a shadow. 
A crushing victory in 1635, when Spain made a great 
effort, can be compared to our victory over the Armada. 
Indeed so formidable were the Dutch by sea that Charles I 
was seriously anxious lest they should control the straits 
and channel. Out in the East Indies they had turned the 
English settlers away from the Spice Islands, and no 
satisfaction was forthcoming for a massacre of English 
traders and their servants at Amboyna, the island where 
cloves were grown, in 1623. Here we see one of the 
reasons why ship-money was so important a question: 
the men who thought only of their position in England 
and Parliament's control of taxation were, from one point 
of view, as short-sighted as those who prevented Charles 
from assisting Christian of Denmark in 1625 j Charles I 
was the patriot in that he aimed at recreating England's 
navy to protect her trade 2 . Sooner or later the English 

1 See page 56. 

2 The ship-money fleet fought the Mohammedans of the Mediter- 
ranean, and captured Salee near the Straits of Gibraltar, thereby freeing 



64 THE GROWTH OF FRANCE 

and Dutch would fight at sea for profit and commerce, 
though old allies and brother Protestants. As traders 
the Dutch got a name for being grasping, and they reduced 
the quantity of the spices that they brought from the 
Indies in order to raise prices. This is a well-known 
commercial heresy, and few would now deny that it is 
better to sell a greater quantity at a lower price so as to 
make a larger total profit. Also the Dutch were great 
merchants, bankers, and carriers of the world's trade, 
but not manufacturers; here was a weak point in their 
armour, for if they lost the carrying trade between 
foreigners they would have no other source of wealth. 
But every nation has had commercial blindness in some 
form. Spain had tried to keep Drake and Hawkins, and 
the generations that followed them, from trading with 
Spanish America, so that raids of retaliation and smuggling 
and piracy were normal in the West Indies. England in 
the day of her power made laws to keep her colonial trade 
in her own hands. Wealth and monopoly stir up hatred 
against the strongest commercial power of any period, and 
in the 17th century the strongest were the Dutch and 
therefore the jealousy was against them. 

France and Spain fought each other in the last years 
of the Thirty Years' War, and still after 1648 they were 
fighting. Richelieu and Louis XIII died, and Anne of 
Austria was regent for the boy Louis XIV in 1643. She 
was really Anne of Spain, being sister of Philip III, and 
lived down the unpopularity that naturally arose against 
her as a partisan of her native land. The young Duke of 
Enghien, who later became Prince of Conde, descended 
from the uncle of Henry IV and therefore of the blood 
royal, won near the Netherlands a crushing victory at 
Rocroi, and another at Lens, blows fatal to the fame of 

many Christian galley-slaves ; but trade rivalry and fear of Holland were 
the chief reasons of the renewal of the navy by Charles I, and therefore 
of ship-money. 



1643-60 THE MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV 65 

the Spanish, infantry. But a minority usually brings 
trouble, and the reign of Anne and of her Italian adviser 
Cardinal Mazarin, was not an exception to the rule. Here 
was an opportunity for the feudal nobility of France to 
raise its head again after Richelieu's heavy hand was 
withdrawn by death. Even Conde opposed the crown. 
Of course aid came to the rebels from across the border, 
Conde fought as the ally of the Spaniards whom he had 
recently beaten, and the Spanish Queen-mother with an 
Italian cardinal was the patriot and champion of the 
grandson of Henry TV. This is known as the war of 
the Fronde. The rebels were the frondeurs, i.e. slingers, 
a term of contempt applied from the gutter-snipes of 
Paris; they were suppressed in 1652. 

In 1640 Portugal became once more free from Spain, 
and the House of Braganza secured the throne. She had 
to fight for independence, but Spain was fast weakening, 
and both France and England helped in turn. Though 
now independent the Portuguese had lost their old power. 
They seemed to be exhausted, as if the strain of main- 
taining a great empire had been too much for so small 
a nation. Their fatal readiness to marry native women 
had weakened the race. The Dutch, who really were 
the enemies of Spain, and only accidentally of Portugal 
because annexed to Spain, had ruined their eastern trade 
and empire. Therefore restored Portugal had no weight 
in Europe. 

We were having our own civil war, and brought it to 
a conclusion just about the period of the Treaty of West- 
phalia and of the Fronde. The result was that the Rump 
Parliament after the battle of Worcester possessed a 
magnificent army, the first real, trained, standing army 
that England ever possessed, thanks entirely to one man, 
Oliver Cromwell 1 . And when a nation possesses such an 

1 Cromwell consciously imitated Swedish methods. He trained his 
cavalry to attack or retreat by alternate bodies, while Rupert broke his 

M. E. H. 5 



66 THE GROWTH OF FRANCE 

instrument of power, it is not long before it makes its 
power felt. But the first enemy of the Roundheads, when 
there were no more Cavaliers or Scots or Irish to fight, 
was Holland, the great sea power. The jealousy, which 
began in the Spice Islands, came to a head and broke out 
into open war when the Rump introduced its new financial 
scheme by the Navigation Act. A definite national in- 
come was wanted, for Cromwell's army had to be paid, 
and the best and most steady income is that which comes 
from trade; so, by the Navigation Act, trade was to be 
forced into English ports, so that customs duties could be 
collected and the profits of England's trade should be for 
England herself alone. Hitherto the Dutch had been 
accustomed to ship colonial products, Virginian tobacco 
let us take for example. Now by the Navigation Act all 
England's colonial trade was to be in English ships and 
brought to English ports, and such Virginian tobacco as 
was required by foreign countries would have to be re- 
shipped in English ships for those countries; that is to 
say it shattered the carrying trade of the Dutch. As 
a matter of fact the war which resulted was not directly 
caused by the Navigation Act, but the bitterness between 
the two countries was brought by it to a culminating point 
at the end of fifty years of commercial rivalry, and the 
question of the English right to demand salutes from 
Dutchmen to our flag on the narrow seas was the occasion 
rather than the cause. The two Protestant powers fought 
each other in 1652 and 1653 very fiercely by sea. The 
Dutch had the larger and the more experienced fleet, but 
had begun to economise since peace had been made with 
Spain in 1648. England, thanks firstly to Charles I and 

enemy by one dashing charge ; the men were to fire from the saddle and 
then fall on at a good round trot, weight and steadiness taking the place 
of impetus. The foot were still half pikemen and half musketeers, and 
he taught them to be effective in a charge, not only solid on the defence. 
He lightened the musket, and did away with the crutch. 



1652 ENGLAND AND HOLLAND 67 

the iniquitous tax of ship-money, and secondly to the 
Rump Parliament which built very quickly a fleet to put 
down those Cavaliers like Prince Rupert who had taken to 
the sea and to privateering after the battle of Naseby, 
was not so very far behind. The generals converted by 
the needs of the war into admirals, Blake and Monk in 
particular, fought several fierce actions against van Tromp 
and de Ruyter, fierce, hard-hitting fights without much 
science. There was no Trafalgar when two such nations 
as England and Holland met at sea. But the geography 
of the naval war was in favour of England. All Dutch 
commerce from the ocean had to come up-channel to 
reach Holland, and the battles were fought by the Dutch 
fleet to cover and protect their commerce, so that they 
fought at a disadvantage. Cromwell hated such a war 
between two Protestant powers and, whatever we may 
think of him, at least it has to be acknowledged that his 
piety as a Puritan was absolutely genuine. As soon as 
ever he had ejected the Rump Parliament, he made it his 
first aim to make peace with Holland. The profit of this 
naval war certainly rested with England. The Naviga- 
tion Act was not repealed, and the Dutch, having been 
forced to fight us immediately after their long eighty 
years' war against Spain, suffered considerably. Holland, 
we have to remember, was not a manufacturing but only 
a trading country, and the result was that the payment of 
interest upon war loans became ever more and more 
difficult for the Dutch Government. 

It was after the conclusion of the Dutch war that 
Cromwell, now Lord Protector, with full control over the 
foreign policy of the country, had to decide whether he 
should take part with France or with Spain. Certainly 
at first he inclined to alliance with Spain. It seemed that 
France during the minority of Louis XIY, while the 
Frondeurs were in arms and helped by Spain, was a 
country on the decline. Cromwell deliberately offered 

5—2 



68 THE GROWTH OF FRANCE 

terms to Spain. Would the King of Spain allow to the 
English Free Trade with the Spanish colonies, and would 
he exempt Protestant Englishmen living and trading in 
Spain from the control of the Spanish Inquisition ? The 
King refused to grant either request, so Cromwell entered 
into negotiations with Mazarin, and made a treaty by 
which he provided a contingent of soldiers to the French 
army on the borders of the Spanish Netherlands. The 
result was that a joint force of English and French under 
the command of Marshal Turenne laid siege to Dunkirk, 
beat the Spaniards who came to save the place, and cap- 
tured it 1 . And so Dunkirk was handed over to Cromwell 
as the price of England's help in 1658. 

Cromwell's alliance with Mazarin has been much 
criticised. It is always said that he helped to depress 
the power of Spain and to raise the power of France at 
the critical moment. The fact of course is true ; but the 
real question at issue is whether Cromwell, or any man 
then living, could have foreseen that the power of France 
would rise so rapidly in the next twenty years as to become 
a direct danger to the whole of Europe. We, knowing all 
the future history, know of course that Cromwell did 
contribute to make Louis XIV the most powerful and the 
most dangerous king at the close of the century. But 
hitherto France, under Henry IV, under Richelieu, and 
under Mazarin, had been tolerant to the Huguenots 
unless, indeed, they were in open rebellion, had main- 
tained the Edict of Nantes, and was in alliance with 
Protestant powers. Cromwell could not possibly have 
foreseen that the youthful Louis XIV would later on 
revoke the Edict of Nantes, persecute the Huguenots, and 
use his military power in a wanton and aggressive manner 
so as to become the tyrant of Europe. 

1 The English veterans after the battle said that the discipline in 
Turenne's army was "not bad for Frenchmen," an amusing proof of 
what Cromwell had done for the military pride of England. 



1658 CROMWELL'S ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE 69 

Lastly, before closing this chapter we must look to the 
East. Terrible as was the harm done to Germany by the 
Thirty Years, the horrors would have been intensified 
to a degree beyond the power of calculation if the Turks 
had taken advantage. But for nearly a century they were 
inactive, and the deterioration of the worst foes of Chris- 
tendom was marked, the discipline of their armies relaxed, 
and intrigue rampant at Constantinople. Thus for a time 
Austria was not distracted. Most of Hungary, however, 
was still held by the Turks, and a Pasha ruled at Buda. 
There was a strong anti -Austrian feeling, which claimed 
that the reigning Hapsburg had no hereditary right to be 
King of Hungary unless chosen by the Hungarian Diet; 
moreover this feeling was largely Protestant. The Tran- 
sylvanians had no tie of allegiance to either the Germans 
of Austria or the Magyars of Hungary, but were aiming 
at independence; their champion, Bethlen Gabor, did 
something to help the Protestant cause in the Thirty 
Years, though he influenced the war but little. In another 
direction Poland was strongly Roman Catholic and the 
natural ally of Austria, and had elected a Swedish king 
of the House of Yasa, the Romanist rival to the Protestant 
branch of Gustavus Adolphus ; thus Poland's share in the 
war, as we saw before, was to prevent Gustavus from 
coming earlier on the scene. But, though once the greatest 
of the Slav countries, she had lost her energy, for where 
a monarchy is elective 1 , and the nobles are bent upon 
proving themselves superior to the king, a strong policy 
beyond the frontier is impossible. Poland's help to Austria, 
therefore, was at best but spasmodic and indirect. 

1 The hereditary Polish dynasty of the line of Jagellon came to an end 
in 1572, and the monarchy then became elective. 



CHAPTER IV 

FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

As France dominates Europe ever more and more 
during the 17th century, it is well to throw our eyes back, 
and see the steps by which that country reached her 
pinnacle of power under Louis XIV. The foundations 
of the strength of France were undoubtedly laid by 
Henry IV. He had distracted Alexander of Parma 
from completing the conquest of the Netherlands during 
the minority of Maurice of Orange. For a time, indeed, 
he had been foiled by Alexander, but by the very fact 
of his distracting the Spanish power he had saved the 
Dutch during their most critical period. Alexander died 
in 1592, and the Treaty of Vervins in 1598, the same year 
in which Philip II died, marks the comparative impotence 
of Spain. It is not to be supposed that Henry no longer 
tried to thwart the Hapsburg ambitions. He considered 
himself the permanent enemy of both the Spanish and 
the Austrian branches of that family, and with France 
thoroughly united for the time being, the Huguenots 
pacified by the Edict of Nantes, the great nobles thwarted 
and crushed, Henry was, for the time being, the arbiter of 
Europe. As regards territorial expansion, we can only 
point to the addition of the Kingdom of Navarre to 
France, and the annexation of a portion of Savoy, which 
gave to France the last link in securing the whole of the 



i6io FRANCE UNDER HENRY IV 71 

Rhone Valley from the Lake of Geneva to the sea. In his 
government of France at home he was helped by the first 
of an able line of ministers who saw that France was a 
self-sufficient country, and that, if the natural resources 
could be thoroughly developed, not only would she suffice 
for herself, but would also gain by an external trade. 
This minister was the Duke of Sully, the predecessor in 
every sense of the word of the great Colbert of the reign 
of Louis XIV. The silk industry and the porcelain in- 
dustry received their start. It is said that France, at the 
end of the 16th century, imported silk to the amount of 
2 J millions of our money; but by 1620 she not only 
supplied her own consumption, but exported to Germany 
and to England as much as 5 millions. Internal trade 
was promoted by the cutting of the first canal between 
great rivers, namely that between the Seine and 
the Saone, and France has had the reputation of being 
the most skilful country in connection with water- 
engineering from those days down to the period of the 
Suez Canal. 

The policy bequeathed by Henry was, of course, the 
policy of strengthening the Crown and thereby unifying 
France. Previous kings such as Louis XI had worked 
much in this direction, but it was Henry IV who really 
gave to France her great impetus, for, by terminating the 
wars of religion and weakening both the great Catholic 
nobility and the Huguenot nobility alike, he left a Crown 
which, in spite of two periods of relapse, never lost its 
domination. As a counterbalance to the power of the 
nobles, he partly created, partly strengthened, the Noblesse 
de la Robe, those families of professional lawyers who, 
claiming to hold their office from father to son, at first 
made the King independent of the old nobility, and later 
on put a stumbling-block in the way of reform. The 
Parlement of Paris began now to get new powers ; it was 
a law-court which gradually secured the right to register 



72 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

the King's edicts, and from this it was but a short step 
towards claiming the right to invalidate a royal edict by 
refusing to register it. This evil was not conspicuous under 
Henry IV himself, but was glaring under Louis XVI, 
nearly two centuries later. Lastly we must notice his 
employment of professional armies, so that he might not 
be dependent upon the retinues of the great nobles in 
war. Efforts had been made before him to create a 
national French force of infantry, but with no great 
success. France under him was still dependent upon 
Swiss and German mercenaries, but at least he showed 
the way to his successors who in course of time evolved 
a national and professional army. In the Jiilich-Cleves 
affair Henry formed a confederation in alliance with 
Maurice of Orange to check the Emperor. Perhaps the 
Thirty Years' War might have begun, with France 
taking a leading part, some nine years earlier than it 
actually did, had not he been assassinated at the critical 
moment in 1610. 

Under the Queen-mother, Mary of Medici 1 , the ex- 
pansion of France was for a time checked. The old 
personal ambitions once more came to the front, and 
court intrigue was ever in the air. But, when at last 
Louis XIII saw that it was to his profit to utilise the 
services of Cardinal Richelieu, order was once more 
restored and the second chapter in the history of the 
growth of France was opened. Richelieu secured the 
peace of France at large by crushing the political powers 
of the Huguenots. He had no choice in the matter; he 
simply had to stamp out what has been described as an 
"imperium in imperio." We are told that by the Edict 
of Nantes public worship, according to the Reformed 
Faith, was legalised in 3500 castles as well as in specified 
towns, and this simply means that feudal rights and 
Huguenotism were bound up together. In the great 
1 Henry's second wife. 



1 628 THE AGE OF RICHELIEU 73 

towns of the west and south of France the right of 
assembly was so strong that one might say that each 
Huguenot town was an organised republic. Moreover 
the Huguenot ministers were certainly very intolerant 
towards their Catholic neighbours. On the other hand, 
after the capture of La Rochelle toleration was still 
granted, but all political power was swept away. Of 
course it was not only the Huguenot castle, but the 
castle of any feudal lord who was too strong for the 
Crown, that Richelieu set himself to destroy. Like our 
own Henry II he saw that the possession of private 
fortresses was incompatible with the unity of the country, 
and henceforward fortified places are to be found only 
on the borders of France, garrisoned by royal troops, a 
defence to France herself and no longer a menace. Out- 
side France we saw in the last chapter that Richelieu 
because of this same Huguenot problem at home was 
unable to interfere openly in the earlier stages of the 
Thirty Years' War. It was only after the fall of 
La Rochelle and after the death of Gustavus Adolphus, 
when the Protestant cause in Germany was leaderless, 
that the power of France was thrown definitely into the 
Protestant scale. Richelieu's ambition was not in any 
degree religious ; he simply wished to weaken the House 
of Hapsburg, to keep Germany disunited, and to secure 
the balance of power in the direction which suited France. 
His campaign in 1630 to secure Savoy, the Yaltellina, and 
Mantua, was planned to cut the Spaniards of Lombardy 
apart from the Austrian armies of central Germany by 
barring to them the use of the Valtellina 1 . His object 
was attained in course of time, and the control of this 
route ultimately passed to the League of the Rhaetian 
Swiss 2 . 

1 See p. 56. 

2 They formed a confederacy in alliance with the genuine Swiss, but 
were not incorporated in Switzerland until the days of the French 
Eepublic, and now they form the Canton of the Grisons. 



74 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

That Richelieu suppressed the French aristocracy is 
a mere commonplace of history, and it is unnecessary 
here to give details. The aristocrats, who resented his 
influence and frequently conspired against him, were 
time after time encouraged by Gaston, Duke of Orleans, 
Louis XIIF s very unworthy brother, and then betrayed 
by him. Montmorency, and many other great nobles who 
openly revolted, were executed on the scaffold. The last 
effort, which was made the very year of Richelieu's 
death, by Henry d'Efnat, known as Cinq Mars, has been 
celebrated in literature, and has therefore attracted 
perhaps more attention than it deserves, for apparently 
it never had much chance of success. 

Richelieu, able and ruthless, did much to destroy, but 
nothing to create. He removed no social evils, he left to 
the aristocracy their privileges, and indeed may be said 
to have spoilt France, though not so much as he benefited 
France, by removing such feudal powers as could counter- 
balance the Crown, and at the same time leaving the 
social privileges which finally led to the great Revolution. 
Against this we must put his patronage of literature, and 
by his support of Conrart, a man fond of letters who 
collected at his house a private assembly of literary men, 
he became the founder of the French Academy. 

France had her second relapse when Anne, the Queen- 
mother, was opposed by the Frondeurs, and the strange 
thing was that a Spanish woman upheld the Crown against 
Conde, a royal prince yet a rebel in alliance with Spain. 
Louis XIII had decided that a Council of Regency, not 
Anne, should govern France; Anne appealed to the 
Parlement of Paris to set aside the dead king's wish, 
and thus gave to the lawyers too prominent a position. 
The Frondeurs were a miscellaneous crowd. Conde and 
the feudal nobility, their Spanish allies, the Parlement, 
and the Parisian mob, had no common interests. For 
a moment there was danger when Turenne, the great 
marshal and Conde's rival, wavered. Then Mazarin 



1643-60. THE MINORITY OF LOUIS XIV 75 

temporarily gave way on minor points, and went into 
exile voluntarily till disunion spoilt the chances of the 
rebels. Finally the leadership of Turenne, powerfully 
helped at Dunkirk by the Cromwellian contingent in 
1658, made the Crown to triumph. 

The critical date in the history of Louis XI Y is 1660, 
when he married Maria Theresa of Spain after signing 
the Treaty of the Pyrenees. From this time onwards it 
was clearly seen that Spain was a thoroughly baffled 
power, and would not count for much in any European 
alliance. Maria, on marrying him, renounced all claim 
to the throne of Spain. Yet such a renunciation might 
in the future be repudiated, and indeed forty years later 
actually was repudiated. This same year Charles II was 
restored to the throne of England, and both by his own 
leanings and by the influence of his mother, Henrietta 
Maria, sister to Louis XIII, he was inclined to look to 
alliance with France, even though France had but recently 
been the ally of Cromwell. We are therefore on the eve 
of a new development, and with Louis XIY reigning 
alone in his own right, Mazarin dead, Spain humbled, 
and England ready to be the ally of France, we have 
now to see how the internal resources of France were 
fostered till she became the dominating, and no longer 
merely a dominating, factor in European combinations. 
Two names stand out prominently, Colbert and Louvois, 
and it is mainly through these two men that Louis XIY 
became so strong. 

The evils which the Duke of Sully had combated in 
the reign of Henry IY had all reappeared. Without 
going into detail, we may say that the greatest evil was 
that the people were heavily taxed and yet very little 
money came into the royal exchequer. Colbert con- 
tinued and perfected the work of Sully, seeing clearly 
that, the more prosperous a country becomes, the more 
easily it can pay taxes, and that the weight of taxation 



76 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

is less evil when the taxpayer has direct relations with 
the king's ministers and is not fleeced by middlemen. 
Now, Mazarin had done a great deal of good to France 
by crushing the Frondeurs, yet he not only had done 
nothing to help the taxpayer, but on his death left be- 
hind him an ill-gotten fortune equivalent to two millions 
of English money. After his death the chief minister was 
Fouquet, who behaved himself almost as though he were 
the king's rival, or even superior, and who also, holding 
the office of Superintendent of the Finances, amassed an 
enormous fortune. The young king, helped by Colbert, 
laid a plot against the all-powerful minister and he was 
condemned after a long trial to banishment, but then 
Louis substituted a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. 
Fouquet once out of the way and his vast private fortune 
confiscated, Colbert had a free hand. He re-assessed the 
chief tax, the taille, which was partly a tax on property 
and partly a tax on land, and from which the nobles 
were exempt; he forced the tax-gatherers to show their 
accounts; and so quickly did his measures have effect 
that in his first year of office he was able to show a 
surplus, and in a short time amassed a reserve of money 
such as no previous King of France had ever had at his 
disposal. Like Sully, he wisely protected the silk in- 
dustry and the porcelain industry. Unlike Sully, he 
forbade the export of corn which France produced so 
abundantly that an export trade would have added 
materially to the resources of the country. Again, like 
Sully, he turned his attention to engineering, and under 
him was constructed the great canal by which the 
Graronne is joined to the Mediterranean Sea through the 
gap between the Pyrenees and the Cevennes. As the 
distance from the Mediterranean coast to Bordeaux is 
about 250 miles as the crow flies and about 1600 miles by 
sea, the importance of such a triumph of engineering is 
self-evident. In the same way the engineering of roads 



1661-83 REFORMS OF COLBERT 77 

was encouraged, yet in this policy there were the seeds 
of a future grievance, for the King claimed the corvee, 
the right to call for compulsory service upon the roads, 
which fills so large a place in history at the time of the 
Revolution. 

The betterment of the various harbours of France, the 
promotion of the interests of Canada and of the French 
East India Company, were also part of Colbert's task. 
But the culminating point of his scheme was the creation 
of a French navy. Richelieu had done a little, but it 
must be confessed very little, towards the foundation of 
a navy, and usually he had to borrow ships from England 
or from Holland. Colbert set himself steadily to build 
ships and to train Frenchmen. He had ready to hand 
the smugglers and fishermen of a very long coast and the 
provincial nobility of Normandy and Brittany, Gascony 
and Provence, and when once their ambitions were turned 
to the Royal Naval service, French sailor and French 
noble officer alike were very capable. There were ele- 
ments of weakness in the new French navy, for every 
young French noble, even if a mere under-lieutenant, 
thought himself the social equal of his captain, or even of 
his admiral. The service being promoted by the Crown 
and the Crown's ministers, and not being a natural service 
of a people turning willingly to the sea, like the English, 
it resulted that in the moment of adversity the French 
navy had no reserves of strength; in fact, we may say 
that it was nursed into excellence, and had no natural 
power to keep up this excellence, whereas the English 
navy during the same period, that is to say roughly from 
the date of Louis XIV down to the days of Napoleon, 
though frequently weakened during the days of peace 
by the politicians in power at the moment, had an in- 
herent vitality and was ever able to grow stronger in the 
face of danger. And what is true of the navy is more or 
less true of most of Colbert's work for France. It was 



78 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

all done for the people and not by the people, and thus, 
though France is and always will be the most self-sufficing 
power in Europe, producing corn and grapes and mul- 
berries, and dependent upon herself alone for her coal 
and her iron, she has, at two crises of her history, been 
unable to stand the strain. France, nursed by despots, 
has not been quite strong enough to contend against all 
the enemies that those despots have raised up against her, 
and in particular has been unable to maintain both a 
strong army and a strong navy. What Louis XIV and 
Napoleon I failed to do, will modern Germany succeed in 
doing ? 

On the purely military side, the strength of France 
was the work of the war minister, Louvois. Whereas 
former kings of France found the native French foot 
worthless, Louvois set himself to train and give to Louis 
a good national infantry. It was based upon a territorial 
system, and each of the old provinces of France hence- 
forward had its own regiment with its own depot and 
recruiting office. The officers were directly responsible 
to the Crown, and not to some noble who was titular 
colonel. With a system of camps and manoeuvres and 
reviews upon a large scale, Louvois was able to work the 
material up in the early days of the reign, between 1660 
and 1672, so that the new regiments should enter upon 
war thoroughly trained. He gave to France some 
150,000 men on a peace footing. He did not entirely 
do away with the mercenary regiments, and there was 
always in the service of the French Crown a large 
number of Swiss and of Germans, but even here he made 
such changes as were necessary to secure proper dis- 
cipline and obedience to the Crown rather than to the 
proprietor of the regiment. In the cavalry indeed the 
predominant element was German, and right down to 
the days of the French Revolution we find such names 
as " Royal Allemand " for mounted regiments. Not only 



MILITARY REFORMS OF LOUVOIS 79 

is this a period of change in the constitution of the French 
army, it was also a period of military development in arms 
and equipment. The old matchlock gradually disappears 
during the reign of Louis XIY and its place is taken by 
the fusil, which was a flint-lock, the gunpowder being 
ignited by a spark struck by a trigger which brought 
a flint on to the pan of the gun. Likewise the pike 
gradually disappeared, and its place was taken by the 
long knife of Bayonne which was fitted into the barrel 
of the gun, and so is the ancestor of the present bayonet. 
It was a long time before a satisfactory bayonet was 
developed from this beginning, but at last Vauban in- 
vented and brought to Louvois' notice the socket bayonet, 
which could be fitted by a ring to the outside of the barrel 
so that the men could load while it was fixed. It is a fact, 
however, that the use of flint-lock and bayonet was finally 
brought to a greater state of perfection by the rivals of 
France. Marlborough at the end of the reign trained 
the English in the use of the fusil \ which they fired better 
and more rapidly, and which threw a heavier and there- 
fore more effective bullet ; and Leopold of Dessau invented 
the iron ramrod which improved the loading. Louvois 
also paid a very great deal of attention to the equipment 
of an army ; the military trains, the food and ammunition 
wagons of a French army that took the field in any cam- 
paign of Louis XIY, were admirable. 

The two greatest of the men who used the new army 
provided by Louvois were Vauban and Turenne. Yauban 
brought to perfection the study of fortification, and he 
either constructed or improved the triple line of the French 
fortresses from Dunkirk and Lille through Champagne 
to Lorraine and Alsace, and finally down to the Alps. It 
will be remembered that the Dutch and Spaniards during 
their long war of eighty years up to 1648 had confined 

1 Curiously enough the English while using the fusil still called it a 
musket, and the French to-day have no word for a rifle but still say fusil. 



80 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

war to the attack or defence of fortresses along their 
common frontier. Now the new armies of France did 
not depend solely upon fortification and entrenchment, 
but in the line of Yauban's fortresses they had a base to 
which they could always fall back if they were temporarily 
checked. Marshal Turenne, the father of modern ideas 
of warfare as far as France is concerned, depended, as 
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had depended, upon march- 
ing rather than entrenchments as the chief element of 
victory, and he struck, so to speak, the right balance 
between defence and attack in his great campaigns. 

It has been said that Louis XIV was not at all original 
in his ideas. The men who served him best were those 
who had already received their training under Mazarin, 
and this is certainly true of the four men whom we have 
already mentioned. Colbert had been one of Mazarin's 
chief officials, and Turenne had won some of his greatest 
victories before Mazarin died. The same statement could 
be made as regards Louis' position as a patron of learning 
and literature. Richelieu had been before him as the 
political founder of the Academy. Corneille and Racine 
had nourished already. Yet the Augustan Age of French 
literature is his reign. It is now that the French language 
began to dominate all European languages ; it became the 
medium of diplomatists, and in fact it is only in our own 
day that it has ceased to be what one might call a uni- 
versal language. The ascendancy of the French literature 
and language was not of course caused by, but undoubtedly 
it was promoted by, French military successes. We may 
very fairly point to what has happened since the final 
humbling of France. Up to 1870 German writers fre- 
quently used French phrases, and many words in the 
German language were French. Since 1870 the Germans 
have deliberately and carefully got rid of French idioms, 
and coined new German words to take the place of 
imported French words. Therefore it may be argued 



HOLLAND AND THE STADTHOLDERS 81 

that success in war impresses the minds of contemporaries, 
and has an influence over the language and literature. 

Before dealing with the details of the age of Louis XIV, 
it would be as well to extend our retrospect to Holland. 
The House of Orange had certainly done most to win 
independence from Spain, and one can hardly think even 
of a Holland without the family of Orange. But there 
were signs that the Dutch did not always acknowledge 
the benefits they had received from their ruling family. 
During a ten years' truce with Spain, 1609 — 19, there 
was a violent quarrel between Prince Maurice and John 
Barneveldt, the chief Dutch statesman of the period. The 
quarrel was partly religious, partly political. Maurice 
represented the strict Calvinistic Church ; Barneveldt was 
more tolerant and, according to Calvinistic ideas, unor- 
thodox. The Reformed Church in Holland wished to 
regard the property of the old Catholic Church as its 
own peculiar property, whereas men of the Barneveldt 
type thought that ecclesiastical property should be 
controlled by the State. Of course Maurice likewise 
represented a military policy, and Barneveldt was the 
leader and spokesman of the great republican merchants 
who regarded militarism as injurious to the country. 
The trouble came to a head, and Barneveldt finally died 
on the scaffold. When the Spanish war came to an end 
in 1648, and the Dutch had time to breathe and enjoy 
their independence and the commerce that had come to 
them as the harvest of their independence, the family of 
Orange seemed to find its work gone. They had been 
military leaders pure and simple, and had no place in the 
days of peace. Prince William II, feeling this, tried to 
carry, out a coup d'etat and failed. He died in 1650, and 
the republican party headed by the brothers de Witt 
declared the Stadtholdership to be at an end. The child 
William III was brought up under the supervision of his 
political enemies, and for the time being the House of 
M. e. h. 6 



82 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

Orange was almost extinct. This was just the period of 
the Dutch wars of the Rump and Charles II, and also of 
the interference of Louis XIV in the Netherlands. The 
special grievance of the Dutch Republic was the Rump's 
Navigation Act, which was accepted and made stronger 
by the Parliament of Charles II. England and Holland 
were certainly ready for another war, so great was the 
rivalry between them in the East and in the West Indies, 
and so great the bitterness that still remained from the 
Rump's war of 1652. 

War broke out in 1664 actually on the west coast of 
Africa and was concerned with the question of the slave 
trade. It extended to America, where New Amsterdam 
was captured by the English and its name changed to 
New York. Then followed a series of battles in the 
Channel between the English and Dutch fleets, fierce 
and hard battles between navies of nearly equal strength, 
and, as in 1652, it was seen that the war would not be 
terminated by one great victory of the Trafalgar type 
but was a question of endurance and stamina. Now 
these very years of fighting, 1665 and 1666, were the 
years of the Plague and the Fire of London, and one 
cannot help thinking that historians who blame Charles II 
have forgotten this plain fact. In 1667 so great was the 
scarcity of coin in England, due to Plague and Fire, that it 
was simply impossible to keep the ships afloat. Sailors 
even deserted to the Dutch and shouted out to their old 
comrades, " We used to fight for tickets but now we fight 
for dollars " ; which means that Charles IPs government 
had tried to pay them their wages by tokens and not in 
actual coin. Here we get the real reason of the national 
disaster of 1667. The ships of our royal navy were laid 
up in harbour ; the Dutch sailed the high seas unopposed, 
picked up many prizes, finally came up the Medway three 
days running at high tide, and inflicted considerable loss 
besides sending London into a panic. By a great effort 



i66 7 ENGLAND'S SECOND DUTCH WAR 83 

the veteran George Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, 
brought back sailors and workmen to their allegiance, 
repaired the batteries of Chatham, and showed so strong 
a front that the Dutch did not sail up again. Yet they 
held the mouth of the Thames for two months and the 
naval glory of England seemed to have vanished. At 
the peace then made at Breda, humbled though England 
appeared to be, she retained New York, and, says an 
American historian, "What was the loss of a few ships 
and a momentary panic in London in comparison with 
the permanent possession of practically the whole Dutch 
colony in North America ? " The policy of John de Witt 
does not strike one as being very clever. Either he should 
not have sent de Ruyter to attack Chatham, in which case 
he could have more easily made friends with England, or, 
sending de Ruyter to attack, should have struck harder 
while he had the chance and not made the Treaty of 
Breda. For the fact is that the new power of France 
was now coming to be recognised. The problem that 
confronted European statesmen was, Should Louis XIY 
be resisted by a grand alliance? should England and 
Holland maintain their commercial and naval jealousies 
against each other, in which case France would get all 
the profit, or should they combine as friends against 
France, the creation of Colbert and Louvois, the new naval 
and commercial power ? 

The danger was not at all imaginary. In 1665, on the 
death of Philip IY of Spain, Louis XIY in the most bare- 
faced way put forward a claim on behalf of his wife to the 
Spanish Netherlands, as being daughter of the late King 
of Spain by his first wife ; whereas Charles, who succeeded 
to Spain itself, was son by the second wife. The local 
custom in Brabant was that the daughter by a first wife 
should succeed to land over the head of her step-brother, 
but local land customs do not usually control succession 
to a crown, and Louis' claim on his wife's behalf was a 

6—2 



84 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

downright violation of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Of 
course this attack upon the Spanish Netherlands entirely 
upset the traditional policy of the Dutch. Ever since 
their first outbreak against Spain they had looked to 
France for help,, and France was at the moment actually 
their ally against England. De Witt and his government 
had therefore reached a crisis. Should they desert their 
traditional ally, France, and make terms with their com- 
mercial rival, England ? It was a difficult point to decide. 
At this moment the English Ambassador at the Court of 
Brussels was Sir William Temple, who has been termed 
with great justice " an unusual man." He opened nego- 
tiations with de Witt, then went to England to interview 
Charles, and returned to Holland to negotiate in 1668 the 
Triple Alliance, Sweden being brought in to form the 
third Protestant power for the humbling of France. The 
Triple Alliance was so strong that Louis had no choice 
but to evacuate the Spanish Netherlands, but at the same 
time the Allies allowed him to retain the strip of border- 
land containing the great fortress of Lille ; that is to say, 
the Allies did not object to a slight loss which fell upon 
Spain in order that they might secure the retirement of 
Louis from the bulk of the Netherlands. 

Here, on the one hand, we see that "a French as- 
cendancy stood revealed to the world, an ambitious 
purpose, avowed by Louis, of asserting his superiority 
among the European States, and sustained by an evident 
superiority in fact 1 ." Temple spoke of Louis as "this 
great comet that has risen of late." On the other hand, 
Spain was distinctly the sick man of Europe, and the 
Spanish Netherlands, lying in the centre between England, 
Holland, the Empire, and France, was destined to be the 
battle-ground of conflicting powers. Not one of the four 
could allow any one of the others to seize the line of the 
river Scheldt and the great port of Antwerp, which, though 

1 Sir J. R. Seeley, The Growth of British Policy, vol. n. chap. 2. 



i668- 7 o LOUIS AND THE NETHERLANDS 85 

always sacrificed to the commercial needs of London and 
Amsterdam and deprived of all the trade which its grand 
position would otherwise command, was too dangerous a 
prize to be allowed to fall into the hand of some pre- 
dominant power. 

Now Charles II, supported by the Earl of Arlington 
whose initial forms the second letter in the "Cabal" 
ministry, gave way to Temple's policy of alliance with 
Holland, but at the same time he was negotiating for 
an alliance with Spain on the old Cromwellian lines. 
Would Spain grant Free Trade to the English in the 
West Indies, and would Spain exempt English residents 
from the control of the Inquisition ? Moreover, he was 
bargaining also with Louis. His adhesion to the Triple 
Alliance is therefore easily explained. He still looked 
upon Holland as England's chief enemy, and there can 
be no doubt that the great majority of Englishmen agreed 
with him. Holland was Carthage, our commercial rival ; 
Carthage must be destroyed, and the Medway disaster of 
but one year back must be avenged. If France was not 
willing to make alliance with England on England's 
terms, France must be taught a lesson; and England 
would make alliance with Holland even though she was 
Carthage. Charles knew perfectly well that he could 
throw Holland over and join France at any moment, 
when Louis could be brought to see that it was to his 
advantage to secure terms with England. Yery soon 
indeed Louis was brought to this point of view. Henriette, 
Charles' favourite sister and wife of the Duke of Orleans, 
Louis' younger brother, came over to Dover, ostensibly to 
visit her brother, in reality to bring the treaty between 
France and England, which was thereupon signed and is 
always known as the Secret Treaty of Dover, 1670. It is 
customary with most writers to blame Charles as a 
merely selfish king, who cared only for self-indulgence 
and pleasure and was willing to sacrifice the interests of 



86 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

his country. Historians point at him playing and laughing 
with his courtiers at the very time when the Dutch ships 
were sailing up to Chatham. But second thoughts are more 
fair. Charles was frequently pretending to play the fool 
while he was really scheming for what, after all, was 
England's political and commercial gain, however shabby 
the intrigues which led to it may appear. It may seem 
mean and sordid to trick the Dutch into an alliance in 
1668 and to throw them over in 1670, but very few poli- 
ticians have hesitated to lure their enemies on to destruction 
in the same way. Had the Treaty of Dover been merely 
a political aifair it would not have attracted so much 
abuse; but there were secret religious clauses attached 
to it, and Charles and James were to declare themselves 
Roman Catholics, and to rid themselves of the domination 
of Parliament by means of French money and French 
soldiers if need be. It was the coming to light of these 
terms that caused the subsequent storm. 

Having won over England to his side, or rather 
having been tricked by Charles into acknowledging the 
importance of having England as his ally, Louis turned 
all his wrath against Holland in 1672. The war was 
partly commercial, for Colbert's policy of building up a 
tariff to protect the home industries of France was as 
directly opposed to the wishes of the Dutch as was the 
Navigation Act of England. But probably ambition far 
more than a policy of tariffs led to the war. Louis had 
the new army which Louvois had created; he had in 
England a naval ally who would bear the brunt of the 
war at sea, whilst the new French navy was still too 
weak to face the Dutch openly; and he had a grudge 
to work off against the Dutch because they had thwarted 
him in his wish to secure the Spanish Netherlands in 
1668. Led by Turenne and Conde, the French army 
pressed into Holland from the south-east by way of 
Maestricht and fought its way near to Amsterdam. 



i6 7 2 FRENCH INVASION OF HOLLAND 87 

Then occurred the famous scene in the streets of the 
Hague. The brothers de Witt were made scapegoats 
when Holland was in danger, and the populace demanded 
the restoration of the House of Orange; they were 
murdered in the streets while the Calvinistic clergy urged 
the people on, and William III, the young Stadtholder, 
who had just been restored to the place of his ancestors, 
conveniently looked the other way. It is hard indeed 
to estimate the motives which controlled the actions of 
William. Being our own deliverer sixteen years later he 
has been put upon a pedestal in history, and is the idol 
of Lord Macaulay; but hostile writers are never slow to 
point out how he was accessory to the murder of the 
two de Witts, at least after if not before the fact, even as 
he was accessory after the fact to the massacre of Grlencoe. 
Very young at this date, brought up in a miserable boy- 
hood by the enemies of his house, naturally inclined to 
suspicion, yet at heart intensely patriotic and looking 
only to the good of Holland, he was tempted to appear to 
be ignorant of a frightful crime, which probably in his 
heart he justified to himself because of the danger to 
which his country was exposed. Under his orders the 
dykes were cut, and Amsterdam was saved. 

In the meanwhile the English fleet under Prince 
Rupert had done its work in opposing de Ruyter, but 
had not met with conspicuous success. In all probability, 
had not de Ruyter held our fleet off, a small English 
army might have been landed on the coast of Holland 
just in time to prevent the cutting of the dykes. But 
at home feeling was already beginning to veer round. 
The spectacle of Holland deluging herself with water to 
save her capital, the heroic struggle of William against 
Turenne's overpowering army, and the thought that 
France had but as it were hired us to beat the Dutch 
at sea, where our own ships would inevitably receive 
much damage, so that the new French navy of Colbert 



88 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

might look on and gain all the advantage, brought. 
Charles IPs Cavalier Parliament into an anti-French 
frame of mind. We should always remember that this 
Parliament which so strongly opposed Charles, which 
hated the Treaty of Dover, which passed the Test Act by 
way of answer so as to secure all government offices and 
commands by land and sea to orthodox Churchmen to 
the exclusion of both Roman Catholics and Protestant 
Dissenters, was the same long Cavalier Parliament which 
had been elected after Charles' Restoration in all the 
fervour of Cavalier joy at his return. The very men, 
or at least the sons and nephews of the very men, who 
had fought and bled for Charles I at Marston Moor or 
Naseby, were wild at the idea of Charles II going over to 
Rome to secure the alliance of Louis XIV. The result 
was that in 1674 England made terms with Holland by 
the Treaty of Westminster, and the French were left to 
continue the war alone. It is well known that James 
declared his conversion to Rome, and Charles, having 
recognised that he had raised a storm of antagonism such 
as it was not wise on his part to face, shrugged his 
shoulders and did not publicly go over to Rome. Pepys, 
the diarist, has an exact phrase which explains Charles : 
"The king has a bewitching kind of pleasure called 
sauntering " ; that is to say, he meant to get the best out 
of life, as much pleasure and power as possible, but he 
did not mean to exert himself beyond the point where he 
saw that the very Cavaliers would oppose him. 

In 1673 many of the Powers of Europe, in particular 
the Emperor Leopold and the " Great Elector " of 
Brandenburg, frightened by French successes, made 
alliance together to save Holland. Immediately Louis 
saw that even the mighty army of Turenne could not 
hold down Holland and at the same time make head 
against the Germans, and the war was at once trans- 
ferred to the middle Rhine. The Imperialists were not to 



1678 LOUIS CHECKED FOR A. TIME 89 

be despised and had a clever leader in Montecuculi, but 
Turenne was more than his match. His winter campaign 
of 1674 — 75 was a masterpiece of manoeuvring and 
counter-marching, and he completely cleared the Im- 
perialists out of Alsace and drove them over the Rhine. 
Following them up into the Black Forest, after a series 
of clever manoeuvres he seemed to hold Montecuculi in 
the hollow of his hand, but just at that moment a chance 
cannon ball struck and killed him. With the death of 
Turenne the luck of Louis XIV seemed to desert him. 
Exhausted by his great efforts and aware that Colbert's 
financial reforms had been severely strained, Louis was 
forced three years later in 1678 to conclude the Treaty 
of Nimwegen. 

Europe had thus, for the time being, been freed from 
the domination of this forerunner of Napoleon, but 
probably nobody doubted that when he had got a new 
opportunity Louis, with his funds repaired, his treasury 
refilled, his army reorganised and brought up to strength 
again by Louvois, would plan some similar stroke. From 
1678 — 88 there was indeed a period of peace for Europe 
at large, but it was a treacherous peace when the air 
was full of thunder and all men anticipated the thunder- 
storm. These ten years have very properly been called 
"the Ten Thunderous Years," and they are notorious 
for the three great crimes, as they may be fairly called 
rather than blunders, of Louis: the seizure of Strasburg, 
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the alliance 
with the Turks which led to their march upon Vienna. 
As regards ourselves in England, they were likewise 
years of thunder. They are the years of the Exclusion 
Bill and the Popish Plot, of the panic engineered by 
Shaftesbury's intrigues, of the Rye House Plot, of the 
accession of James II and the rebellion of Monmouth, 
of the expulsion of the President and Fellows of Magdalen 
College, and the Trial of the Seven Bishops, up to the 



90 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

culminating point when the letter was sent to William of 
Orange to summon him to England. 

Firstly, Louis had by the Treaty of Westphalia in 
1648 obtained most of Alsace subject to some conditions, 
and been confirmed in his possession of the three bishoprics 
of Lorraine. He had secured the strip of the Spanish 
Netherlands, which still belongs to France and is known 
as French Flanders, in J 668. By the Treaty of Nimwegen 
he got Franche Comte, of which the capital is Besancon. 
He intrigued now to extend his borders, and created cer- 
tain Chambres des Reunions from the Parlements of Metz 
and Besancon, who gave a verdict that the dependencies 
of Alsace and Franche Comte and the three bishoprics 
were really French territory, which meant that Louis was 
practically free to annex the whole of Alsace and Lorraine. 
The great free German city of Strasburg was included ; 
he seized Strasburg in 1681, and immediately Vauban 
turned it into a fortress of the first class. Matthew 
Arnold always used to point to the French government 
of Strasburg and Alsace as a conspicuous example of the 
ability of France to win over those whom she conquered. 
The Alsatians have for two centuries boasted themselves 
to be French, and it would not be too much to say 
that the presence of flourishing colonies of Alsatians in 
distant Algeria, founded after 1870, are a justification of 
the policy of Louis XIV. 

Secondly, Louis had a quarrel with the Pope. Even 
before the days of the Reformation many a King of 
France, though orthodox as regards doctrine and dogma, 
wished to be politically free from the power of Rome, to 
appoint his own bishops, and to hold as royal property 
whatever sees were momentarily vacant. Louis XIV 
followed this policy, and in 1682 an assembly of clergy 
under the presidency of Bossuet passed certain resolu- 
tions at Saint Germains which were simply defiant and 
anti-Roman. Thus in a sense Louis was anti-Papal at the 



1678-88 TEN THUNDEROUS YEARS 91 

very time when to English eyes he was the persecuting 
Catholic, and when we got rid of our own King because 
he was a Roman Catholic and a possible persecutor in 
England, the Pope himself was a member of the Grand 
Alliance against Louis. Thus it came to pass that a 
French King who defied the Pope signalised his inde- 
pendence from Rome by persecuting the Huguenots and 
revoking the Edict of Nantes. One cannot avoid the 
conclusion that a despot must be illogical simply because 
he is a despot. Louis, like our own Henry VIII, 
persecuted those who agreed with Rome and those who 
were the arch-heretics against Rome. It is thought that 
Madame de Maintenon, whom he married secretly a few 
years after the death of Maria Theresa, pushed him on 
into persecution, yet probably he would have done some- 
thing similar had she never come across his path. 
Persuasion turned many Huguenot nobles to Catholicism, 
persecution destroyed thousands in the south who were 
dragooned without mercy, and exile gave to England, 
Holland, and Brandenburg, who were only too willing to 
receive them, some of the very best artisans of that middle 
class of which France was in sore need in the days of the 
great Revolution. 

Thirdly, there was new trouble on the side of Turkey. 
We have to go back to the days of the 16th century when 
the Turkish advance was for the time stopped by the 
battle of Lepanto at sea and the resolute defence of the 
Hapsburgs by land, so that during the Thirty Years' War 
there was no Turkish peril in rear of Austria 1 . In 1645 
the Sultan roused himself to attack the Venetians in 
Crete, and the siege of Candia, "Troy's rival," lasted 
from 1648 to 1669, when the Crescent finally prevailed 
over the Lion of St Mark. In 1663 began a new land 

1 "Fortunately for Europe, the unique opportunity offered by the 
Thirty Years' War had been lost by the Turks." Professor Lodge in the 
Cambridge Modern History, vol. v. p. 341. 



92 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

war. In spite of intrigues in court and harem, of 
deterioration and growing slackness, the Turks were 
still formidable and held the major part of Hungary. 
The Emperor Leopold I appealed to the Diet of the 
Empire. Louis XIV played the part of champion of 
Christendom and sent troops. Thus an army of Austrians 
and Hungarians representing the Hapsburg dominions, 
of Germans of the Empire, and of French allied with them 
almost against precedent, fought and won an action near 
the convent of St Gothard on the river Raab. But then 
France and Austria fell apart once more, and in 1674 the 
Emperor engaged in war against France to help Holland. 
The Hungarians were never loyal if they thought that 
the Germans of Austria disregarded their nationality, 
and a serious conspiracy had to be suppressed in 1670; in 
a most ill-advised manner suppression was followed by 
persecution, as if the Hungarians could be dragooned 
to renounce Protestantism even as Bohemia had been 
crushed in the Thirty Years. Yet the Turks profited 
little by Austrian policy. A new war broke out between 
the Sultan and Poland, and a new champion appeared in 
the person of John Sobieski who won a great victory 
in 1673. His services were rewarded when he was elected 
next year to be King of Poland. 

The efforts of the Turks were at this period serious 
indeed but spasmodic. Attacking Poland at the wrong 
time, in place of attacking Austria when weakened by 
Hungarian conspiracy and French war, they now ad- 
vanced again on Austria when Hungary was crushed and 
the French nominally at peace. Louis XIV was credited 
with being the cause of this advance, but it appears that 
he hoped to profit by it rather than originated it. In 
1683 an enormous army of Turks laid siege to Vienna. 
Its defences were weak, but the defenders fought 
desperately to almost the last gasp. The conscience of 
Germany was aroused. Lutheran Saxony and Catholic 



i68 3 A NEW TURKISH PERIL 93 

Bavaria, the Diet of the Empire and the nobles of Poland, 
sent aid. On September 12 under the supreme command 
of John Sobieski the decisive action was fought, and 
Vienna was saved after a siege of two months. Europe 
put the blame of the danger on Louis, whose aggression 
on the west flank of Germany had given to the Turks 
their opportunity. 

Leopold was now able to retaliate. In 1683 — 86 more 
victories were won by Charles, Duke of Lorraine, who 
had been the chief leader of the Germans in the defence 
and relief of Vienna though he then gave up the com- 
mand to Sobieski; after the relief Poland's help was 
withdrawn. Buda at last fell and was restored to 
Christian rule in 1686. Practically all of what we now 
know as Hungary and Transylvania was effectually 
occupied by the House of Hapsburg 1 . War continued 
down to the Peace of Garlowitz in 1699; during these 
"nineties" most of Europe was banded against Louis, 
and thus a French war and a Turkish war went on 
together and came to an end together. This explains 
why, in spite of victories, more ground was not recovered 
and Belgrade remained in Turkish hands. Meanwhile 
Venice had roused herself to attack Greece, and occupied 
the Morea and a good deal of the Dalmatian coast; the 
most famous incident in this part of the war was the 
bombardment of Athens in 1687, when the beautiful 
buildings of the acropolis of the ancient city, especially 
the Parthenon or temple of Pallas Athene, were wrecked 
by Venetian guns. 

Thus the story returns to Louis and France, though it 
has to be remembered that in the years 1688 — 98 Austria 
was distracted from giving the full weight of her assist- 
ance to the Allies. One has a feeling of sympathy with 
Austria now as at other times of crisis, however greatly 

1 Peter the Great also was pushing the arms of Bussia southwards 
and in 1696 occupied Azov: he lost it in 1711. 



94 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

one dislikes her persecution of Protestants. To be at 
one and the same time the bulwark of Europe against the 
Turk and of Grermany against Louis was an exhausting 
task. Other Powers benefited; England and Holland had 
no share in the eastern war, and were content to protect 
their Mediterranean trade by bargaining with the 
Moslems; Prussia was fated to oust Austria from the 
headship of Grermany without ever having borne her 
share of past burdens; Russia became the chief protector 
of the Christians of Turkey. 

The ten years of thunderous peace were dragging out. 
In 1685 James II came to our throne, and the Sedgemoor 
campaign was followed by his attack upon the Church of 
England, the expulsion of the President and Fellows of 
Magdalen College, the trial of the Seven Bishops, and the 
birth of a son to his second wife Mary of Modena. In 
1686 was founded the League of Augsburg to resist Louis. 
Thus the readiness of England to drive out the Romanist 
Stuart coincided with the readiness of the Allies for 
war. William of Orange accepted the invitation to go 
to England just when the Allies wanted England to join 
them. James II refused the aid of Louis against William, 
and wisely enough, because his best chance was to trust 
to English national dislike of the Dutch without making 
England the tool of France. Louis on his side made no 
effort to invade Holland in William's absence, probably 
arguing to himself that, if his bitterest enemy were locked 
up in England and engaged in war owing to that anti- 
Dutch spirit, he would be free for a campaign on the 
Rhine. But the result was very different. James' army 
and fleet went over to William, James ran away, and 
so England came into the Grand Alliance, while Louis 
gained nothing but detestation by his ruthless devasta- 
tion of the Palatinate, which shocked an age accustomed 
enough to pillage. He had let England slip away from 
him, failed to do harm to Holland, yet had done himself 



1 688 GRAND ALLIANCE AGAINST LOUIS 95 

no good. The moral is that such a despot, eager to extend 
his frontier in several directions and with too many irons 
in the fire, is liable to give way to the wrong ambition at 
the wrong moment. 

The war of the League of Augsburg (1688 — 98) is 
remarkable in that France was in arms against nearly 
all Europe, and secondly in that France put to the test 
the efficiency of her new navy which had been created 
for her by Colbert, though Colbert himself was now 
dead. At first it seemed as if the French would control 
the Channel, for the English and Dutch admirals, mis- 
understanding each other, were beaten at the battle of 
Beachy Head, 1690. But the critical year was 1692 when 
Louis autocratically insisted that his ships should put out 
to sea though the Mediterranean squadron had not yet 
come round to reinforce the Brest squadron, and even an 
autocrat cannot be sure that fleets will meet when they 
are separated by 2000 miles of sea. The result was the 
great victory of Cape La Hogue. Admiral Russell was 
not a Nelson, and the battle of La Hogue was not in itself 
a crushing victory to be compared to Trafalgar, but the 
results of it were almost as great. Russell, following up 
his success, burnt 15 ships upon the coast of Normandy 
and thoroughly upheld England's naval superiority. 
Louis came to the conclusion that, if after Colbert's 
death Colbert's navy was so easily beaten, he had better 
devote all his attention and all his spare funds to Louvois' 
army. The failure of the French attempt to win Sea 
Power under Louis XIY is, therefore, a strong argument 
in favour of the theory that no nation yet has ever 
been able to maintain both a great army and a great 
navy for any length of time, a theory which may be 
falsified in the future but which certainly is justified by 
the experience of the past. It must not be supposed 
that Louis never had ships at sea after 1692. He gained 
a conspicuous success when a squadron destroyed our 



96 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

fleet of merchantmen bound for the Mediterranean, which 
was known as the Smyrna fleet. The skilful and energetic 
sailors of Brittany and Normandy also turned their atten- 
tion to privateering and inflicted many a loss upon the 
English. But we can refer to the dictum of the famous 
American naval writer, Admiral Mahan; a nation which 
has secured the ocean as a highway of commerce by 
right of victory and the superiority of her ships of war, 
as trade follows the flag, can view with equanimity the 
capture of a few stray merchantmen by privateers; and if 
a victory such as that of La Hogue doubles England's 
trade, the capture of five or even ten per cent, of our 
trade by privateers is trifling. 

By land the main fighting was once more in the 
Spanish Netherlands. At first Louis easily secured 
Mons, Charleroi, and Namur, the border fortresses on 
the Spanish side of the frontier, whilst William's troops 
were chiefly engaged in Ireland. But in 1690 and 1691 
the Battle of the Boyne and the ultimate surrender of 
Limerick freed William's hands, and he was able to 
devote the whole of his force to the Netherlands. Though 
twice beaten by the Duke of Luxemburg, Turenne's ablest 
successor, William made such, a stubborn resistance that 
at last in 1695 he was able to lay siege to the citadel of 
Namur. His chief characteristic was that he never knew 
when he was defeated and could rally his forces so as 
to lose all the disadvantages of defeat, and he kept to- 
gether so successfully all his Allies, English, Dutch, 
Austrians, Brandenburgers, Bavarians, and Spaniards, 
that he brought the siege to a victorious conclusion. The 
fall of Namur brought a shock of surprise to Europe. 
Its first capture by the French had seemed to be a great 
triumph. It had been strengthened by all the arts of 
Yauban, yet it had fallen to the motley army of William, 
and Boileau's poem of laudation at the capture of Namur 
was caricatured by an English ode of greater triumph at 



i6 9 7 A SECOND BKEATHING SPACE 97 

its recapture. Once more Louis felt that his means were 
being exhausted, and he said himself that the last piece 
of gold would win. Unluckily for himself, his instincts 
towards persecution and aggression had spoilt all that 
Colbert had done for France. England with some sur- 
prise discovered that she could carry on a war for nine 
years without finding herself plunged in a financial crisis. 
The beginnings of our National Debt and the foundation 
of the Bank of England during this war prove that 
England's trade was prosperous, and that our government 
could borrow in the country enough to carry us over years 
of danger. The Tory landowner growled that his land 
was severely taxed in order that the Whig merchants 
who had lent money to William at a high rate of interest 
might be recompensed, and probably many heads were 
shaken and people thought that England's credit could 
not stand the strain; but it did stand the strain, and the 
last piece of gold did win, in spite of an intrigue set on 
foot by the goldsmiths of London to ruin the new Bank 
of England. By the Treaty of Rysivick in 1697 between 
England and France, Louis acknowledged William as 
King of England and disowned the exiled James II. A 
year later the Allies likewise made peace with France on 
condition that Louis gave up all that he had won since 
the Treaty of Nimwegen; yet he kept Strasburg. It was 
in 1699 also that Austria was freed from the incubus of 
the Turkish war by the Treaty of Carlo witz. 

Thus a second time Louis had been foiled, and for a 
second time he rested to nurse his strength and watch for 
a new opportunity. It was not long in coming. Charles II 
of Spain was at death's door, and the Allies arranged two 
Partition Treaties; by the first the bulk of the Spanish 
dominions was to go to a Bavarian prince; by the second, 
after the Bavarian died, to the Archduke Charles of 
Austria, second son of the Emperor Leopold. But the 
pride of Spain had not been taken into consideration. 
m. e. h. 7 







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iyoo THE SPANISH SUCCESSION 99 

Spain might be the " sick man " of Europe, but had not 
sunk so low as to accept an Austrian Hapsburg as her 
King at the dictation of Europe. Charles bequeathed his 
crown to Philip of Anjou, second grandson of Louis XIY. 
Louis accepted the will of Charles, and Spain greeted the 
young man as the best answer to the insulting partition. 
Moreover Louis could argue that neither he, nor the 
dauphin, nor the dauphin's eldest son was now King of 
Spain, and that the Treaty of the Pyrenees did not stand 
in the way of the dauphin's second son. Philip's grand- 
mother was the sister, the Archduke's grandmother was 
the aunt, of the late King. Therefore his was the better 
claim, and it was supported by the good will of the 
Spaniards. 

In Philip's name French troops occupied the Spanish 
Netherlands and Spanish Lombardy. Therefore Louis 
had the opportunity for which he had been waiting. His 
troops were in possession, and the Allies had the difficult 
task of turning them out. He could pose as the champion 
of Spain, and the Allies openly were committed to dis- 
member the empire of Spain. In spite of the Treaty of 
Kyswick and the recapture of Namur, France was yet the 
dominant military power. France, moreover, was in a 
fine central position, and the Allies were scattered and 
far apart. But Louis had an autocrat's weakness, ex- 
cessive belief in himself, and in no way did he show 
this more clearly than in his choice of generals. He 
passed over his best men who would have represented the 
traditions of Turenne, such as Catinat and Villars, and 
pushed to the front Tallard and Villeroi. And such men, 
mere favourites of an autocrat, fate willed it should meet 
two great captains of war. 

Handsome John Churchill had several years ago 
attracted the attention of Turenne; yet it was only 
known that he had been second in command to Fever- 
sham in a fight on a very small scale on the marshes of 

7—2 



100 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

Sedgemoor. Eugene of Savoy, a cousin of the Duke of 
Savoy, had been brought up at the court of Louis as a young 
French noble, had been ordered by Louis to enter the 
Church, had made up his mind that he would be a soldier 
and not a clergyman, had fled from France to throw him- 
self upon the mercy of the Emperor, and had already 
served with distinction against the Turks. Louis lived to 
find out that the combination of these two men would 
destroy his apparently impregnable position as the ally 
and protector of Spain. Within a few years Eugene 
had driven the French out of Spanish Italy, and 
Churchill had conquered the whole of the Spanish 
Netherlands. 

The people of England were not at all anxious to 
enter into war and cared little for the partition treaties, 
but they were moved by the seizure of the fortresses of 
the Spanish Netherlands by French troops. Then Louis 
committed a great blunder in acknowledging James III, 
son of the dying James II, as King of England. 
William III died just at this moment, bequeathing to 
Anne a war, the justice of which from our point of view 
was acknowledged by Tory and by Whig alike. 

The Allies now were England, Holland, Austria, and 
a large number of the minor German States, such as 
Brandenburg whose Elector had just recently been raised 
to be King of Prussia, and Hanover whose Elector had 
been acknowledged as the heir to the throne of England; 
also after a short time Savoy and Portugal. Savoy was 
important as giving access by the Alpine passes from 
Italy to France, and Portugal as giving to the Allies the 
naval base of Lisbon. On the side of Louis were not only 
the whole of the Spanish dominions, but also Bavaria and 
Cologne. In days gone by Richelieu had always tried to 
conciliate Bavaria, and a century later Napoleon was to 
find in Bavaria, also in Saxony and Wurtemberg and 
Baden, his warmest allies against the larger Powers, 



1702 THE ALLIES; METHODS OF WAR 101 

Austria and Prussia. Therefore, not only was Louis in a 
strong position because he was actually in possession of 
the Spanish forts of the Netherlands and of Lombardy, 
but likewise he had through Bavaria a direct line of 
attack upon Austria. He promised to the Bavarian 
Elector such territories as would be conquered at the 
expense of Austria, particularly the Tyrol, but the 
Tyrolese were devoted to the family of Hapsburg and 
rose against the Bavarians. This happened again in the 
days of Napoleon, and is a proof that mountaineers may 
sometimes be willing to be the subjects of a despotic 
monarch, and are not always devoted to republicanism 
and independence as in the case of the Swiss. 

In the celebrated campaigns which follow we see 
that the new ideas of warfare have now taken root. 
Almost all the infantry were armed with the new flint- 
lock guns and bayonets, but throughout the English 
under Marlborough's careful training were the most 
skilful in their use, and the fire, which is so marked a 
century later under Wellington in the Peninsula, was 
a feature also of Marlborough's army. Likewise he and 
Eugene made the utmost use of their cavalry, neither like 
Rupert sending their men in at a dashing gallop un- 
supported, nor yet like Cromwell charging steadily at the 
trot and firing from the saddle, but organising them in 
several bodies, one to support the other, and charging 
with the naked steel, wave upon wave, until the last 
reserve broke the enemy's last reserve, and victory fell to 
the general who had the last word. Field artillery was 
becoming more important, and Marlborough himself 
personally directed the fire of his batteries at Blenheim. 
As regards fortifications and entrenchments, neither 
Marlborough nor Eugene believed in them, and were 
ready to out-manoeuvre the enemy from his chosen 
position or else to mask his fortresses. Except where 
the French were stubbornly on the defensive, this is a 



102 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

war rather of marches and manoeuvres according to the 
school of G-ustavus and Turenne than of many sieges. 
But while Marlborough and Eugene worked very well in 
unison on these lines, they were much hampered by the 
Dutch. They regarded the war as a whole, Spain and 
Italy and Germany being so many squares upon the 
chess-board, whereas the Dutch cared only for their one 
square and wished to see Marlborough with their own 
contingents confined to the Netherlands. Thus, if one 
may pass a criticism on Marlborough that he did not 
always show signs of the perfect strategist, it has to be 
remembered that this stubbornness of the Dutch did 
much to upset the grander plans which he had laid. As 
regards personal qualities, he was the calm and cool 
soldier who kept his head in the midst of the stress of 
fighting, though he was quite capable of putting him- 
self at the head of a victorious charge of horse, while 
Eugene was the dashing soldier who seemed to go mad 
with excitement in the heat of battle. But Marlborough 
had the defects of his qualities, and the stern self- 
repression which made him cool at a crisis had its 
revenge in a period of break-down after he had won 
a victory. 

The war begins with minor actions upon the Rhine 
and in Italy, while the Allies were preparing themselves 
for greater efforts and creating their armies. This is true 
of England in particular, for the jealousy against a 
standing army, inherited from the days of Cromwell's 
military despotism, was always so strong that on the 
conclusion of each war the army was cut down to danger 
point, so that when a new war begins the army has to 
be recreated. It was in 1703, just as Marlborough was 
beginning to feel his way, that Louis let slip his chance. 
His ablest marshal, Villars, planned the direct attack 
upon Austria by way of Bavaria of which we have already 
spoken, but for various reasons it did not succeed. In 



VICTOBIES OF THE ALLIES 103 

1704 Villars was recalled, and the work was put into the 
hands of the less competent Tallard and Marsin. Eugene 
came up from Italy; Marlborough made his celebrated 
cross-march from the borders of the Netherlands by the 
Ehine and the Neckar through the Black Forest to the 
upper Danube, stormed the heights of Donauworth to 
secure a passage across the Danube, joined Eugene, and 
finally headed off the French and Bavarians at Blenheim. 
A series of powerful cavalry charges upon the French 
centre, which had been weakened whilst the infantry of 
the Allies were pounding at their flanks, gave to the pair 
their first great victory. The fall of Namur before 
William III had been the first sign that the soldiers of 
France were not invincible, but Blenheim was the first 
crushing blow which broke the prestige of Louis. Bavaria 
was devastated and henceforward useless to France. The 
French armies were put upon the defensive, and the 
initiative in the war passed to the Allies. 

The year 1704 is celebrated also for our capture of 
Gibraltar, but, though the Bock still remains to us as a 
memorial of this great war, its seizure in that year was 
not really so important as the naval action which followed. 
The French Mediterranean squadron met the English and 
Dutch off the Spanish port of Malaga. The action seemed 
to be indecisive, but the French retired to Toulon and 
never again risked a pitched battle. Therefore the Allies 
won Sea Power quite easily and without any very great 
effort. In 1705 Barcelona fell to a mixed force, which came 
by sea; and in 1706 was defended against the French 
by land and sea, being relieved by the English fleet under 
Admiral Leake which the French dared not face. The 
fall of Barcelona to the Allies was followed by the up- 
rising of the whole province of Catalonia, always bitterly 
opposed to Castile and ready to welcome any enemy of 
Castile. Marlborough now planned a great attack upon 
the south of France and particularly upon Toulon. It is 



104 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

clear that he realised to the full the value of Sea Power, 
which gave to the land forces of the Allies the initiative 
to attack France wheresoever they would. To carry out 
this plan Eugene in 1706 marched westwards up the river 
Po, delivered Turin which was being besieged by the 
French, and drove them completely beyond the Alps into 
their own country. But the opposition of the Dutch was 
fatally felt. They insisted so strongly that Marlborough 
should not leave their frontier, looking, as we suggested 
before, merely at one square upon the chess-board and not 
at the board as a whole, that his great plan broke down. 
He found himself forced to fight in the Netherlands, and 
compensated himself for his disappointment by the brilliant 
campaign of Ramillies. 

The French, put on the defensive, had a series of en- 
trenchments in a long curve between Brussels and Namur 
by which they hoped to cover Brabant. It was not 
difficult for Marlborough by making a feint and breaking 
through at the weak point to render these 70 miles of 
entrenchments useless. Then he came upon Marshal 
Villeroi who was posted upon some rising ground 
behind the village of Ramillies, made a feint with his 
English troops as though he would attack the French left 
wing, threw the main force of his infantry upon the 
village and, with a typical series of cavalry charges in 
succession, carried the rising ground so as to completely 
break the French right and centre; then, swinging round 
his line and charging at a right angle to his previous 
attack, he swept off the French left and Villeroi's army 
was exterminated. Brussels and Antwerp fell to him at 
once, and Ostend the next year after a siege. Therefore, 
foiled in his designs upon South France, he was now in 
full possession of all the Netherlands except the strip 
covered by the border fortresses. 

Affairs were not however going well in Spain. It is 
clear that Marlborough's idea was to break the military 



1706-7 ALTERNATE VICTORIES AND DEFEATS 105 

power of France, whereas to the Archduke Charles of 
Austria it was the conquest of the Spanish throne for 
himself that was the main purpose and excuse of the 
war. Accordingly in 1706 and again in 1707 the Allies 
marched upon Madrid. In 1706 they captured the capital 
but had to evacuate it, so great was the hostility of the 
Spaniards. In 1707 the army of the Allies, partly 
English but mostly Portuguese, commanded by the 
French refugee, the Earl of Gralway, was beaten at 
Almanza by a Franco-Spanish army commanded by the 
Jacobite refugee, the Duke of Berwick. This battle 
was decisive, and was a proof that Marlborough's plan 
of leaving Madrid alone and attacking Toulon by sea was 
superior. Eugene, fresh from his Italian victories of 1706, 
attempted single-handed in 1707 to capture Toulon and 
was beaten back. Clearly, isolated campaigns were not 
likely to be successful when the Allies were fighting in 
different directions, each for his own hand. 

It has been suggested that the Allies ought to have 
come to terms with Louis in 1706 after the triple successes 
at Ramillies, Turin, and Barcelona. Yet it is doubtful if 
so proud a King as Louis XIV could have accepted terms 
such as would suit the Allies whilst he still had a chance 
of rallying. To terminate a war before the enemy is 
decisively beaten would merely have the effect of giving 
him yet another breathing space and encouraging him to 
make a greater effort later on. The Treaties of Nimwegen 
and Ryswick had given already to Louis such a chance, 
and the Allies could not afford a treaty which would leave 
him defeated but not exhausted. One points to the wars 
of 1813 — 15 and of 1870 as instances of the sound, though 
it may seem to be inhuman, argument that an aggressive 
enemy must be absolutely humbled to the dust, and 
Europe required that Louis should be humbled. Those 
who criticise the Allies for failing to make peace may 
point to Almanza, and say that the Allies never had a 



106 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

chance of conquering Spain itself and therefore should 
have been contented. 

In 1708 it appeared as though the French would be 
able to win back lost ground. The districts of the 
Netherlands occupied by Marlborough after Ramillies had 
been handed over to the Dutch, and the bitter rivalry 
between the Protestant Dutch on the one side and the 
Catholic Flemings and Brabanters on the other was such 
that the latter were ready to welcome the French back 
again. The Duke of Vendome in 1708 made a dash 
across the French border, recaptured Grhent and Bruges 
and, though failing to surprise Antwerp, held the line of 
the river Scheldt. Taken by surprise for the moment 
Marlborough quickly recognised the position, and marched 
to cut Vendome off from France. The armies met at 
Oudenarde on the middle Scheldt, and Marlborough's 
van might have been isolated and destroyed by Vendome 
had not Louis' grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, been 
present and by his royal influence caused a retreat. 
Later on in the afternoon of the same day the French 
attacked when the whole of Marlborough's army was up, 
and the third great defeat was inflicted upon them. 
Then, joined by Eugene's army, Marlborough advanced 
on Lille. Eugene undertook the siege and Marlborough 
covered him, and the great fortress fell. In the winter of 
1708 — 9 Louis again offered terms, and the Allies might 
have found it to their advantage to have accepted them, 
but a condition was made, contrary to Marlborough's 
advice, that Louis should actually join the Allies to expel 
Philip from the throne of Spain. Of course it was im- 
possible for him to submit, and he braced himself up and 
appealed to the patriotism of France to renew the struggle. 
In 1709 the border fortress of Tournai was captured by 
Marlborough on the upper Scheldt. Then followed the 
siege of Mons, and Marshal Villars for the first time was 
put into the command which he might have exercised 



77 



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The Netherlands: to illustrate reigns of Elizabeth, 
William III, and Anne 



108 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

with much profit earlier. He advanced to save Mons, 
Marlborough and Eugene came out to meet him, and 
stormed with very great loss the entrenchments which he 
threw up at Malplaquet. Mons then fell. 

The "fag-end" of the war is remarkable only for a 
new effort of the Allies to regain Madrid, which ended in 
disaster like the previous efforts, and for the advance of 
Marlborough and Eugene into the territory of France. 
Marlborough's plan was to leave alone Vauban's triple 
line of fortresses and advance on Paris ; Eugene and the 
other Allies preferred to attack the fortresses one by one. 
Villars defended them sturdily, so that there is no great 
event to be chronicled in the years 1710 — 12. The 
interest of these years is entirely political. In England 
arose the usual cry that the war merely benefited the 
Whig merchants who lent money at a high rate of interest 
to the Government to carry it on, while the poor Tory 
landowners had to pay out of the land tax. There was 
no object gained by a continuance of the war except that 
my Lord of Marlborough would gain military glory for 
himself. We were simply fighting to help our Dutch and 
Austrian Allies. If the Dutch wanted a series of barrier 
fortresses against France, or if an Austrian Archduke 
wanted to become King of Spain, let them fight for their 
own hands without all this expenditure of English blood 
and money. Moreover by the deaths of his father and 
brother Charles was now Emperor, and to join Spain to 
Austria under the same Hapsburg would be fatal. 
These arguments had immense weight upon the English 
people, and Jonathan Swift drove the point home in one 
of the most powerful and most popular of political pam- 
phlets, "The Conduct of the Allies." In 1710 Queen 
Anne dismissed her Whig ministers and dissolved Parlia- 
ment. The Tories obtained a majority, thwarted Marl- 
borough in every way, secured his dismissal, and finally 
brought about the Treaty of Utrecht. 



1709 CHARLES XII OF SWEDEN 109 

There was one period in this long war when Louis 
might have obtained a very valuable ally. Ever since 
the days of Grustavus Adolphus the Swedish army had 
been a power in Europe, and Sweden held various 
positions on the south of the Baltic. The Swedish menace 
was not so dangerous to Europe as might have been 
thought, for Denmark and Brandenburg, Poland and 
Russia, were all offended by this supremacy and on 
various occasions banded together. However, if the 
enemies of Sweden were many, they were disunited. In 
1700 the youthful Charles XII had recently come to the 
throne. He was a lover of adventure and a sort of knight 
errant, devoted to war as his only pleasure. In turn the 
Danes were beaten and Copenhagen captured; and the 
Russians, not led on that occasion by Peter the Great, 
were routed at Narva by a force one-fifth of their own 
strength. Then followed an invasion of Poland, the de- 
position of Augustus of Saxony who was King of Poland, 
and the invasion of Saxony itself in 1706. Had Charles 
XII now turned to France as the old ally of Sweden and 
taken the Allies in the rear, the combined plans of Marl- 
borough and Eugene would have been seriously endan- 
gered. But it is well known from Yoltaire's account that 
Marlborough himself interviewed the young King, played 
upon his ambition, and influenced him to turn his eyes 
once more towards Russia. He commenced a wild and 
blind march into the heart of Russia. Peter, anticipating 
the policy which foiled Napoleon the Great, retreated 
until the Swedish army, reduced in numbers and with a 
quarter of the men sick and unable to fight, was surrounded 
by a vastly superior force of Russians and beaten at 
Poltawa in July 1709; 11,000 are said to have been killed 
or taken prisoners in the battle, and 13,000 capitulated. 
Charles himself barely escaped and crossed the border 
into Turkish territory. After various adventures, at one 
time welcomed by the Turks and stirring them to attack 



110 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

Russia — it was in 1711 that the hitherto victorious Peter 
was forced to give up Azov — at another time treated as 
an enemy and besieged in the house which had been 
allotted to him at Bender, at last in 1714 he escaped and 
reached Sweden. He found all his enemies arrayed 
against him, including Greorge I of England who wanted 
Bremen and Yerden for Hanover. In 1718 he was killed 
in front of a fortress in Norway. Finally Bremen and 
Verden were added to Hanover, Stettin and part of 
Pomerania to Prussia, Livonia and a large part of Finland 
to Russia. Sweden was no longer a power to be feared. 

This story has introduced us to a new Great Power, 
destined to shift the centre of historical interest from 
western to middle Europe. Modern Russia is the creation 
of Peter the Great. Before him several Tsars had ex- 
tended their way towards Kiev. But he first laid down 
the lines of a traditional national policy, that Russia must 
expand to the sea. He founded St Petersburg, and for 
a short time held in the opposite direction the port of 
Azov. He reorganised and settled the conditions of the 
national Russian life, creating a class of officials devoted 
to the Crown as a counterbalance to the hereditary 
nobility, and so strong were his foundations that at the 
present day officialdom or, as it is sometimes called, 
bureaucracy is the dominant element in Russian life. 
He organised a Russian army of which it has been said 
that, though dirty and ignorant, it has always been able 
to take more pounding that any army of its more civilised 
neighbours. In those days the chief enemies of Russia 
were Sweden and Poland and Turkey; in days to come 
they may be Germany and Austria. The Western Powers 
sometimes have found Russia a valuable ally, sometimes 
have hurried into war against Russia so as to press her 
back from the sea. But whoever have been the enemies 
and whoever the friends of Russia, the great Empire has 
always expanded. 



EXPANSION OF RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA 111 

There was yet another Power whose friendship each 
country found to be valuable, yet whose ultimate ex- 
pansion could hardly have been anticipated, namely 
Brandenburg-Prussia. The story of the expansion of 
the power of the Hohenzollern dynasty is fascinating, as 
it tells of steady growth and readiness to seize oppor- 
tunities. As far back as the 10th century there were 
Counts of Zollern in the far south-west of Germany. In 
1417 Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgraf of Nuremberg, 
was chosen to be Elector and Margraf of the Mark of 
Brandenburg, which was a German border district on the 
lower-middle Elbe over against the less civilised Slavonic 
races. There his neighbours eastwards were the Teutonic 
Order of Knights, who in the middle ages were an 
outpost of Christendom and crusaders against the heathen 
Prussians 1 ; as they declined they sold the New Mark of 
Brandenburg on the Oder to a successor of Frederick. 
Then the Kings of Poland were lords of Prussia, divided 
into a West or Royal half, and an East or Ducal half. 
In 1525 Albert of Hohenzollern obtained East Prussia 
under the overlordship of Poland. Next were obtained 
the Duchy of Cleves near Holland, Magdeburg and 
Halberstadt on the Elbe, and part of Pomerania, after the 
Thirty Years; though a Lutheran, George William the 
Elector of that day had not welcomed the presence of 
Gustavus and the Swedes. Frederick William, the Great 
Elector 1640 — 88, thus succeeded to a number of states, 
held by various titles, and scattered over Germany from 
the Polish to the Dutch frontier. He was a great 
organiser of central government, which he could only 
bring about by a strong paternal despotism, himself 
appointing officials so as to limit the powers of the local 

1 Adventurers from any country were welcomed by the Order; in 
fiction the Knight of the Canterbury Tales, in history Sir John Chandos 
in the interval between Crecy and Poitiers, and Henry of Bolingbroke 
when exiled, crusaded in Prussia. 



112 FRANCE AT HER ZENITH 

governments, and extending the authority of his Council 
of Brandenburg over the other states. He welcomed 
some 20,000 landless Huguenots, who were invaluable as 
teachers of agriculture and industry where the soil was 
poor and manufactures did not exist. He had canals cut, 
especially one between the Oder and the Spree. His son 
Frederick in 1701 took the title of King of Prussia by 
virtue of his non-German territories, and henceforward 
Brandenburg is, so to speak, lost in Prussia. In the wars 
of William III and of Marlborough the Prussian troops 
gave a foretaste of their quality at Namur, Blenheim, and 
Oudenarde. But he was yet a poor king and had to be 
subsidised. The time was to come when, as a principal 
rather than an ally, Prussia would dictate to Europe. 
Meanwhile Frederick I added Stettin and part of Swedish 
Pomerania to his dominions; his grandson, Frederick II 
or the Great, was to add Silesia at the expense of Austria, 
West Prussia at the expense of Poland. 

From unfavourable beginnings a solid kingdom was 
formed out of disconnected parts. The non-German 
districts were more and more Germanised under the 
Hohenzollerns until Slavonic ideas and language dis- 
appeared. A national standing army was formed under 
the strictest discipline and centralised authority; a strong 
line divided the noble officer from the peasant in the ranks, 
another strong line the tax-paying non-military burgher 
from the less taxed soldier families. Foreigners were 
continually attracted, and even were kidnapped for the 
army, and soon these would be genuine Prussians. 
Royal patronage of industries and a measure of public 
education were not wanting. And if one looks forward 
to Frederick the Great as the King who did most as an 
"enlightened despot/' at least his ancestors showed him 
the way, and throughout modern Prussia was the creation 
of the Hohenzollern dynasty. 



CHAPTEK V 

THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

The War of the Spanish Succession came to an end 
by a series of treaties, and the most important of these 
was the Treaty of Utrecht, finally signed in 1713, between 
Britain and Holland and France. The Emperor Charles YI 
continued the war alone for another year, but as Villars 
had the upper hand over Eugene he made peace by the 
Treaty of Bastadt in 1714. The map of Europe was 
altered and the results were of vast importance. 

Firstly, the Frenchman Philip Y was recognised as 
King of Spain, and the Catalans who had taken the side 
of the Allies were left to his tender mercies. Thus the 
Hapsburg-Bourbon rivalry across the Pyrenees came to 
an end after two centuries of almost continuous war, and 
a Bourbon held each throne. Yet the Allies had fought 
to prevent this very thing. It had been a successful war 
except in Spain itself, and now the original object of the 
war was lost. The crowns, however, of France and Spain 
were never to be united. When Louis XI Y died in 1715 
and was succeeded by his great-grandson Louis XY, it 
was clear that the French Bourbons and Spanish Bourbons 
were positively hostile. Louis XY was very young. The 
regent, Philip Duke of Orleans, son of Louis XIY's younger 
brother, was heir to the French throne; therefore he 
looked for the support of the late enemies of France, 
M. e. h. 8 



114 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

Britain and Holland, in case Philip V should try to unite 
the crowns. The hostility of France and Spain was of 
but short duration. Louis XV married in 1725 Maria, 
daughter of Stanislas, ex-King of Poland, and in 1729 an 
heir was born to him. So then there was no reason why 
the two countries should not become friends. In 1733 
they made an agreement which in later years blossomed 
into the Family Compact ; henceforward the two Bourbon 
dynasties were to be found on the same side and were 
Great Britain's enemies. But it was a weakened and 
exhausted France that fought us in the Seven Years, 
and it is absolutely true that Marlborough's victories 
made possible the later victories of Clive and Wolfe. 
Not till the War of American Independence did the allied 
Bourbons obtain their revenge. The permanent gain of 
the British was Gibraltar; and a temporary gain was 
Minorca, which thrice taken and thrice lost remains 
to-day Spanish. 

Secondly, Philip only obtained Spain and the Spanish 
Indies. Charles VI obtained, as compensation for losing 
Spain itself, nearly all the European dominions, viz. the 
Spanish Netherlands, Lombardy, Sardinia, and Naples. 
This satisfied the British and Dutch, for their main interest 
was to save the Netherlands from French control. But it 
did not satisfy Charles VI himself. He had to submit to 
two conditions ; the Dutch were to garrison the fortresses 
of the " barrier," i.e. the Belgian border towards France ; 
the Scheldt was to remain closed to trade, and therefore 
the possession of Antwerp was valueless. He felt that 
Britain and Holland had only made use of him for their 
own ends, deserting him when they made the treaty, 
crying out that their blood and gold ought not to be spent 
to make him King of Spain, giving the Netherlands to him 
simply to keep out the French, but taking good care that 
Antwerp should not have the chance of attracting the 
overseas trade from London and Amsterdam. 



1 7 13 THE TREATY OF UTRECHT 115 

Thirdly, the Duke of Savoy obtained Sicily. This fact 
is important as the House of Savoy is to-day the reigning 
House of Italy. The geographical position of the duchy 
astride the Alps, one foot in Savoy, the other in Piedmont, 
led to some gain at every crisis, for in every European 
combination and war the duke's friendship was valuable 
out of proportion to the size of his dominions. 

In making peace as in prosecuting war the Allies 
neglected an important factor, namely the pride of the 
Spaniards. They were offended and sore because no con- 
sideration had been shown for their feelings, an archduke 
whom they did not want had at first been forced upon 
them, and now had received their Italian and Netherland 
lands. No nation can be expected to submit tamely to 
contemptuous disregard, and Spain was not so abjectly 
low in fortune as to remain quiet as the "sick man." 
The Netherlands were too far away. But Gibraltar and 
Minorca and the lost parts of Italy might be recovered. 
Philip V was much under the influence of his second wife, 
Elizabeth of Parma, known as the " termagant of Spain," 
and her immediate wish was to secure Parma for her own 
young son, Don Carlos ; the son of Philip's first wife was 
heir to Spain itself. Thus the troubles which arose be- 
tween the Treaty of Utrecht and a final settlement twenty- 
five years later were primarily due to Spain's offended 
pride and Elizabeth's ambition. 

The first move of Spain was due to Cardinal Alberoni, 
an Italian of humble birth, whose aim was to win back 
Naples and Sicily. He hoped that Britain, at any rate, 
might be unable to interfere because Charles XII of 
Sweden was threatening to support the Jacobites against 
G-eorge I; but this danger passed away when Charles 
died 1 . A Spanish force occupied Sardinia, but when the 
attempt was made to occupy Sicily Admiral Byng fell on 
the fleet off Cape Passaro and destroyed it in 1718; there 
1 See p. lio! 

8—2 



116 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

was no declaration of war by us as Spain was the aggressor. 
The British and Dutch and the Duke of Orleans, as the 
rival Bourbon to Philip V, formed a Triple Alliance, and 
Alberoni's scheme collapsed. 

In 1725 Baron Ripper da, a Netherlander who had come 
to Spain, formed another combination. Philip and the 
Emperor Charles, the original rivals, were to come to 
terms; Elizabeth's two sons were to marry Charles' two 
daughters; the British were to be driven from Gibraltar, 
and an Austrian East India Company, with its base at 
Ostend as Antwerp was useless, was to have all their 
privileges of Spanish trade. It was an unnatural alliance 
and no success attended it, though there was a half- 
hearted effort to attack Gibraltar. 

In 1733 died Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King 
of Poland. France supported the ex-King Stanislas, 
Austria and Russia supported Augustus' son for the 
vacant throne. At the same time, Orleans being dead 
and Louis XV having an heir, there was no reason why 
France and Spain should continue to be enemies ; and by 
the Treaty of Turin the two reconciled Bourbons, together 
with the Duke of Savoy, agreed to drive the Austrians 
out of Italy and rearrange the map. Walpole was at that 
moment in power in England, and his aim was solely for 
peace ; he is said to have gloated that much blood was 
shed and none of it British. There was in fact a great 
deal of fighting. A French force appeared as far off as 
Dantzig in the interests of Stanislas, but was unsuccessful. 
Russia alone was the ally of Austria, but Russia cared 
only for the throne of Poland and a Turkish war. There- 
fore the Austrians had to defend themselves both in Italy 
and on the Rhine, and were everywhere beaten; even 
Eugene, now an old man, could do nothing, for the 
Austrian military organisation had sunk very low. The 
Emperor Charles had to come to terms, and at last the 
"definitive" Treaty of Vienna gave a general peace in 



DEFINITIVE TEEATY OF VIENNA 117 

1738. He gave up a great deal in Italy. But one thing 
was very near to his heart, and for it he was ready to give 
up a great deal. The House of Hapsburg had no male 
heir. Therefore he wished to secure for his daughter, 
Maria Theresa, his hereditary dominions, and for her 
husband, Francis of Lorraine, the title and dignity of 
Emperor. If the Powers, and in particular France, would 
agree to the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, which would 
override the Salic Law for Austria and German lands, — 
there was nothing to prevent a woman from inheriting 
Hungary and Bohemia, — he would surrender Naples. 

The various changes in the map of Europe in altera- 
tion of the Treaty of Utrecht, whether made in 1738 at 
Vienna or just before or after, were these. Charles 
obtained the recognition of Maria Theresa as his heiress 
by the Pragmatic Sanction; but Francis gave up what 
remained of the Duchy of Lorraine outside the three 
French bishoprics, and received instead the Grand Duchy 
of Tuscany, which was a fief of the Empire and was 
vacant through the recent death of the last of the Medici. 
Poland being held by Augustus II of Saxony, Stanislas 
received Lorraine for his life, and then it was to lapse to 
France 1 . Don Carlos, son of Philip V and Elizabeth, was 
King of Naples and Sicily ; Don Philip, their second son, 
was Duke of Parma ; thus the Bourbon family gained a 
third throne, and was planted in Italy as well as in France 
and Spain. The Duke of Savoy received Sardinia in 
place of Sicily, and took the title of King of Sardinia; he 
also gained some frontier places towards Milan. But the 
Emperor retained Milan. These arrangements last down 
to the wars of the French Republic. 

It is by considering the Italian question and the Prag- 
matic Sanction that we can understand why Austria did 
less in the Balkans than she could have done. During 
the Spanish Succession, as during the Thirty Years, the 
1 This happened in 1767. 






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1739 AUSTBIA AND THE TUEKS 119 

Turks had missed their opportunity and done nothing to 
harass Austria in the rear. But no sooner was the Spanish 
Succession settled than they attacked the Venetians in 
the Morea. Venice appealed to Austria, and Prince 
Eugene won new laurels by beating the Turks out of 
south Hungary and winning a notable victory at Belgrade 
in 1717. It was impossible, however, to help effectively 
such a state as Venice in her dotage. The Turks kept 
their hold over Greece for another century. In truth the 
Austrian efforts towards the Balkans were feeble, and just 
when it seemed that the Turkish power would collapse 
and the Christian races be freed, the Emperor drew back. 
It was a blunder on his part. Russia was just beginning 
to get within striking range of the Balkans. But there 
was not then an Eastern Question as we know it to-day, 
when the Powers form and re-form in groups according 
as they pose as the rival champions of the Christians or 
bolster up the Turks. Austria alone was then in a position 
to be the champion, and Charles drew back because of 
Italy and his ambition for Maria Theresa. Of course that 
country is the happiest that has only one frontier, but 
Austria has always been distracted and unable to devote 
herself to one question at a time. Thus Belgrade remained 
in the Sultan's hands, and the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739 
marked the cessation of the Austrian advance down the 
Danube. 

The period both in England and France is celebrated 
not so much for the many political intrigues as for the 
strange mania for speculation which came upon the two 
nations. In each case there was a fear that the national 
debt was too great for the country to bear. In England 
the South Sea Company, in France the Mississippi Com- 
pany under the control of a Scot, John Law, offered to 
take over the whole of the national debt and convert the 
creditors of the government into shareholders in these 
trading and colonial companies. The companies were 



120 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

genuine and their trade was genuine, but there was such 
a rush for the buying of shares that they ran up to 
abnormal values in a short space of time, the natural 
trade was not sufficient to give the extravagant profits 
that were expected, and after a period of speculation 
came, according to a modern phrase, a bad slump and 
large numbers of people lost their all. The cleverness of 
the Whig financier, Sir Robert Walpole, saved England 
from any serious trouble, but in France matters were very 
bad, and the affairs of Law's company had not been 
straightened by the time that the French Revolution 
broke out. 

The fact that these financial schemes were based upon 
colonial trade is a reminder to us that we are coming now 
to the period when the colonial interests of England and 
France would clash. During the 17th century the colonial 
power of each country had been gradually growing, but 
there had been no serious collision between them so as to 
involve the mother countries. The English colonies in 
N. America, whether under the Crown, or under charters 
which gave them something like democratic rights, or 
proprietary, lived each its own life, and there was no bond 
of union except the mere fact that they were all English. 
In the extreme north of America the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany had a footing in the cold regions and dealt in furs. 
Along the east coast, from Nova Scotia, acquired at 
Utrecht from France, down to Georgia, the youngest, 
each colony or plantation or possession had its own system 
of government, and they were mostly jealous one of 
another. In the West Indies were Jamaica, acquired by 
Cromwell, and various islands of the outer ring, which 
had in the past been mere buccaneering stations and 
acknowledged, some more and some less, the authority 
of the Crown. The traditions of Drake and Hawkins 
remained amongst the buccaneers and pirates of the 
Caribbean Sea, but there had not yet been any serious 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN AMERICA 121 

trouble with regard to France. The French had the 
royal colony of Canada, which was simply the St Lawrence 
valley. Explorers from Canada were beckoned on by the 
call of the great unknown west, sailed the lakes, found 
the headwaters of the Ohio and Mississippi, and thus 
reached the mouth of the latter and founded Louisiana, 
where the regent's name was given to New Orleans. 
Law's scheme was to bring all the French colonies into 
one great Gompagnie des Indies Occidentales. In spite of 
his failure French trade flourished in the sugar islands, 
Hayti, Martinique, Gruadaloupe, St Lucia. Indeed the 
English traders had serious rivals. The keystone of 
English 1 commercial policy was the Navigation Act : all 
our trade was to be in our own ships, not colonial ships, 
nor French ships. It was to stop the French sugar trade 
with our colonies, as much as for other reasons, that the 
wars of the 18th century came about, and the merchants 
of Bristol, whose chief interests were in the West Indies, 
could put pressure on the home government to support 
their views. The Navigation Acts, rather than the Stamp 
Act or the Tea Duty, caused American Independence. 

As regards Spain, it had been settled at Utrecht that 
our South Sea Company should have the sole right, 
enjoyed between 1701 and 1711 by the French Guinea 
Company, to provide negro slaves to Spanish America, 
also to send one ship a year of general merchandise. But 
this did not satisfy the English of the West Indies. 
Drake and Hawkins had begun the tradition of forcing 
our trade upon Spanish America against Spain's will. 
Cromwell and Charles II in turn offered alliance to Spain 
if she would allow free trade. Then, even when by 
treaty certain privileges were obtained, smuggling and 

1 Since the Union with Scotland in 1707, the correct word would be 
4 ' British. ' ' But the Navigation Acts were English measures to protect 
English trade with English colonies. Scotland was no longer a foreign 
country under the Acts, but had not yet gained profit from them. 



122 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

buccaneering continued. "Villainy is inherent in this 
climate," wrote our admiral from Jamaica. The Spanish 
coast-guards retaliated, and one Jenkins had his ear cut 
off. Excitement blazed up in England. Walpole was 
forced into war in 1739, and it was an unsatisfactory war, 
both from its disgraceful cause, and because the science 
of the time could not stay the ravages of yellow fever 
among our sailors. But most important is the fact that, 
owing to Spanish and French Bourbons drawing close 
together, we were sure sooner or later to be dragged into 
war against France also. Walpole was forced to resign. 

This local and naval war coincided with a general 
European conflagration. Charles VI died, and he had 
obtained distinct recognition of the claims of Maria 
Theresa by the Pragmatic Sanction. At once Bavaria 
and Prussia took advantage of Maria's isolation. Charles 
Albert, " the Bold Bavarian " of Dr Johnson's satire 
" The Vanity of Human Wishes," laid claim to Austria 
on the basis of the will of the Emperor Ferdinand I of 
175 years ago. Later on he was elected as Emperor. 
Saxony, and of course France, supported Bavaria. Frederick 
of Prussia, without any claim at all, played openly for his 
own hand ; he had the army which his father had care- 
fully nursed, and he invaded Silesia in 1741. It seemed 
madness for so small a country to plunge recklessly into 
war, but Austria was distracted by the attitude of Bavaria 
and France, and the loyalty of Hungary was by no means 
certain. But Great Britain and Hanover and Holland 
were true to their obligations, and, as in the " Spanish 
Succession," so now in the War of the Austrian Sue-cession 
stood by Austria. It was clear that Great Britain must 
be the ally of Maria, not only because Hanover had to 
observe the balance of power and feared Prussia rather 
than Austria, but also because we had to be on the side 
opposite to France. Of the ministers who succeeded 
Walpole at least Lord Carteret saw that British interest 



1 74 1 THE WAR FOR SILESIA 123 

demanded that we should strongly support Hanover and 
Austria, continuing the policy of William III and Marl- 
borough to weaken France. When he was attacked as a 
pro-Hanoverian who was sacrificing British interests to 
a useless alliance, Pitt being one of his fiercest opponents, 
even then the ministers who succeeded him were committed 
to the war and could not withdraw. Almost unwillingly 
our country had to continue the struggle of which the prize 
was colonial expansion. 

Frederick won the battle of Mollwitz in Silesia in 1741, 
rather by the excellence of his disciplined Prussians than 
by his skill in leadership. Then he invaded Bohemia. 
But his allies did not cooperate with him. Maria, sorely 
pressed and against her will, bought him off in 1742 by 
the surrender of Silesia. This province is separated 
from Bohemia by a range of mountains ; towards Prussia 
it is open and comiected by the river Oder; so nature 
seems to demand that it should be Prussian rather than 
Austrian. Probably Maria gained far more than she 
lost in this war. Previous to her reign every Austrian 
sovereign had found Hungary a source of weakness rather 
than of strength, and Hungarian patriots had often been 
ready to receive the help of the Turk rather than remain 
under the Catholic rule of Austria; but Maria in her 
extremity appealed to the loyalty of her Hungarian 
nobles, and they answered in the true spirit of chivalry. 
Freed from the pressure of Prussia, she was able to turn 
all her strength against the Bavarians and the French, 
and Charles Albert was crushed. Britain helped Maria 
by distracting the attention of France, and in 1743 an 
army of British and allied Germans headed and drove 
back the French upon the river Main at Dettingen; the 
general plan of this campaign, though Dettingen was not 
a great victory, is not unlike that of Blenheim, for a French 
army striking at Austria through Bavaria was intercepted 
and forced back. Then in 1744 Frederick declared war 



124 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

again on Maria, and again had to be bought off by a con- 
firmation of his right to Silesia. 

In 1745 Austria and Great Britain and Holland re- 
mained in arms against France. The centre of the war 
was shifted to the Netherlands, where Marshal Saxe 
attacked the border fortresses. The Allies advancing on 
him as he besieged Tournai on the Scheldt, he beat them 
back at Fontenoy. Then the Jacobite rising compelled 
the withdrawal of the British troops. Our Sea Power was 
sufficient to localise the war at home, and the Highlanders 
of the Young Pretender were no longer to be feared when 
once they turned back from Derby. But things went 
wrong for Maria without any help from Britain. She 
saw her Austrian Netherlands overrun by Saxe, and it 
appeared as if the work of Marlborough had been undone. 
Yet in Italy the Austrian troops gained some successes; 
and British naval squadrons contributed to the weakening 
of France, and small yet important victories won by 
Hawke and Anson in the Bay of Biscay brought the 
ministers of Louis XV to think of peace. In India 
indeed the French were successful, and Labourdonnais 
captured Madras. But across the Atlantic an expedition 
from the colonies of New England captured Louisbourg, 
the French fortress on Cape Breton Island which stands 
as a sentinel at the mouth of the St Lawrence. By a 
general treaty of peace in 1748 at Aachen, otherwise 
Aix-la-Chapelle, it was agreed that there should be a 
mutual restoration of all conquests. The French restored 
to us Madras, and we restored to them Louisbourg; the 
French evacuated the Austrian Netherlands, but Maria 
had to guarantee Silesia finally to Frederick. The 
difficulty about the Empire was solved when, on the 
death of the " Bold Bavarian," the Electors chose Maria's 
husband, Francis of Lorraine. 

Before we enter upon the Seven Years' War, which 
was the great deciding conflict of the 18th century, it 



1748 TREATY OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE 125 

would be as well to pass in review the various combatants 
and the resources at their disposal. Prussia, we have 
already seen, was a country which owed everything to 
its dynasty. A poor soil was worked up and transformed; 
manufactures on a small scale were introduced. Foreigners 
of all kinds, whether the Huguenots as in the days of the 
Great Elector, or Germans who were enticed by royal 
bounty from Rhineland and elsewhere, were made wel- 
come. The Kingdom, in fact, which was a mere 
agglomeration of G-erman and non-G-erman lands round 
the nucleus of the old Mark of Brandenburg, was gradually 
receiving unity from its dynasty. But the one great 
institution upon which all its success was based was the 
army. In previous wars it had acted merely as an 
auxiliary or even as a mercenary force; now it became under 
Frederick the Great the principal military factor in Europe. 
It had been brought to a pitch of excellence by very 
severe training. About half the men were Prussians and 
Brandenburgers, and half foreigners, whether adventurers 
who served for the love of fighting, or mercenaries, or 
vanquished enemies forced into Frederick's ranks. For 
instance, the majority of the Saxons when their country 
was overrun in the war now to be described were con- 
verted into Prussian soldiers. But, whether natives or 
foreigners, the men were all drilled with the utmost 
rigidity. The principle was taken from Leopold of 
Anhalt who is always known as " the old Dessauer," who 
had served under Eugene at Blenheim and Malplaquet, 
and was connected with the family of Orange. Frederick's 
principle was that of good shooting, quick loading, and 
vigorous attack. He reduced the ranks to three and 
introduced iron ramrods, which enabled the men to load 
more quickly and more surely. It is not to be supposed 
that Prussians only profited by the example of the old 
Dessauer. For instance, Marlborough's infantry in the 
War of the Spanish Succession required no training 



126 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

beyond his, and both at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and in 
the war which is to come at Minden and Quebec, a very 
steady and well-maintained infantry fire was the mark 
of the British armies. But in the 18th century, after 
Marlborough's time,, the British had no influence upon 
continental warfare. Our greatest victories were won, 
either when the native British in our armies were few 
in comparison with the number of subsidised allies, or 
when they fought in Canada and India. Stiff drill and 
steady fire, therefore, are characteristically Prussian. 
Next Frederick trained a heavy cavalry which was able 
to stand the shock of the keen light horsemen, better 
riders and more skilful swordsmen, which the Austrians 
were always able to put into the field from their Hungarian 
and Croatian provinces. As regards Frederick's tactics, 
he thought out what he himself called an oblique order, 
by which he refused one wing to the enemy and 
strengthened the wing which was to attack. The essence 
of this plan is that by very rapid marching Frederick 
could hurl the whole of his force upon one flank of the 
enemy, and so partly defeat and partly neutralise a much 
larger force. It was in the battle of Leuthen that he 
carried out this manoeuvre to perfection. Lastly, we 
must note that Frederick's military successes would have 
been slight in spite of all the cleverness with which he 
took to himself and developed Leopold's ideas, if he had 
not such excellent material to work upon. The more 
volatile French armies would have been crushed by such 
discipline and unable to show their national elan. The 
steady and more phlegmatic peasants and serfs of northern 
Germany formed excellent material upon which Frederick 
could work. 

On the other side the Austrians were much more pre- 
pared for the Seven Years' War than they had been for 
the first Silesian War. Maria had been looking forward 
to her revenge upon Frederick, and her officers had been 



THE RESOURCES OF FREDERICK 127 

getting ready. They were not overwhelmed at once by 
the Prussian charge as they had been previously, and in 
particular the cleverest of Maria's generals, such as 
Laudon, developed a power of counter-attack, upon 
occasions attacked on their own initiative, and were not 
already beaten beforehand through want of confidence. 
Frederick could never entirely worst the large bodies of 
the light Austrian horse. We also find that the Austrian 
generals had increased and improved their artillery to a 
great extent. 

In the first Silesian war Frederick had had allies, and 
Maria was distracted by enemies in every direction. 
The position was now reversed. The allies were Maria's, 
and Frederick could only look to Britain and to Hanover. 
All the power of Russia was arrayed against him. Partly 
this was indeed in Frederick's favour, for very rarely did 
the Russians and Austrians combine ; but when they did 
combine, he was almost at his last gasp, though such 
occasions were rare. On the other hand as fast as he 
made head against the Austrians in Silesia or Saxony he 
was recalled to face the Russians in the valley of the 
middle Oder, and it was impossible for him to follow up 
his victories over one ally in front as long as the other 
ally threatened his flank. That he had not more trouble 
and that France had not the deciding voice in the war 
by attacking Frederick's western flank is due to Great 
Britain. It was necessary for us to have the alliance of 
Prussia for the defence of Hanover; therefore Pitt sub- 
sidised large numbers of Germans. Frederick lent a 
general in the person of Ferdinand of Brunswick, and the 
result was that, except on one occasion, he felt safe as 
against France. 

It was a new France where there was as much display 
and show as under the great Louis but very much less 
ability and patriotism, a France exhausted by the cruel 
wars in which Marlborough and Eugene played so 



128 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

conspicuous a part, unable to pull herself out of the slough 
of exhaustion because her social institutions were so bad, 
paralysed not only by the appalling wickedness of Louis 
XV, but also by the spirit of utter frivolity and lack of 
seriousness which seemed to find that a defeat was a joke, 
so that the nation could not rally. There were the 
elements of greatness in many a Frenchman, but the 
court of the fifteenth Louis was a sink of iniquity and the 
great men were not allowed to come to the front. Thus 
the national characteristics, French dash and cheerfulness 
and ability to face a great crisis, had no chance to display 
themselves, and the middle of the 18th century witnessed 
the triumph of German steadiness. It is not too much to 
say that the French, above all nations, have always re- 
quired tactful leading which will enable them to make 
use of their natural resourcefulness. Deprived of such 
leading and defeated for want of it, they are too apt to 
shout out, Nous sommes trahis. 

We have thus already shown that in the Seven Years' 
War Great Britain would be found arrayed on the side of 
Prussia, and France upon the side of Austria. This was 
brought about simply by force of circumstances. France 
and Britain were rivals in India and in America. In 
India this is the period of Dupleix and Clive, but Dupleix 
had already been foiled and had returned to France 
deserted by his countrymen and impoverished, having 
exhausted the whole of his own and his wife's enormous 
fortunes in the service of France without repayment; 
thus there was no casus belli in India, and neither 
the English nor the French East India Company 
wanted a new war. It is across the Atlantic that we find 
the casus belli, and at last the French explorers from 
Canada and the Virginian backwoodsmen, who were 
drifting to the West across the Alleghanies, collided upon 
the banks of the river Ohio. War blazed out fiercely, 
a horrible war in winch the semi-civilised trappers and 



BRITAIN IN THE SEVEN YEARS 129 

the wholly uncivilised redskins could not be controlled by 
the few regular soldiers. A reign of terror spread along 
the borders of our colonies, particularly Virginia, Penn- 
sylvania, and New York. The mother country was forced 
to come to their aid, for the colonies — each with its 
different form of government and its different religious 
ideas, democratic Puritans in the northern, aristocratic 
planters in the southern, Dutch and other foreigners 
between — were quite unable to help each other. There- 
fore Britain and France were at war. 

There are two theories about the relations between 
Great Britain and Hanover since the accession of George I. 
According to some writers, Hanover brought to us neither 
honour nor profit, and involved us in the complicated 
struggles of Germany from which we could otherwise 
have kept free. Such a theory goes on the idea that, 
had it not been for Hanover, Britain and France would 
have fought out their colonial rivalry by sea and in Canada 
and in India without involving the presence of great armies 
opposed to each other in Germany. It is thought that, 
our destiny being bound up with the sea, we were brought 
into risks by the mere fact that the King of Great Britain 
was also Elector of Hanover. This theory of insularity, 
that our statesmen should always go upon the assumption 
that living in an island it is wrong for us to interfere in 
continental politics, has a great deal to be said for it. But 
it disregards the palpable fact that in the days of William 
III and Marlborough we gained the most substantial 
advantages by being one of many allies in a great land 
war. Although anyone who reads the Treaty of Utrecht 
superficially does not see where our gain is apparent, 
except in the possession of Gibraltar and Minorca and 
a few minor places in America, yet it is clear that the 
expansion of France was diametrically opposed to the 
prosperity of Great Britain, which from the reign of Anne 
onwards had its root in the defeat of the French land 

M. E. H. 9 



130 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

forces and the consequent disorder of the French finances. 
Britain had taken her share in the Grand Alliance, had 
created a national debt that was not at all overpowering, 
and as the prize of Marlborough's victories had developed 
a national strength which made success in the Seven 
Years' War possible. Lord Roberts' dictum that our 
armies have created our Sea Power is certainly proved by 
the facts. Therefore the rival theory concerning Hanover 
is that it was to the advantage of the British to 
be dragged into the Seven Years' War, when, for the 
purpose of defending Hanover, our statesmen were forced 
to make alliance with Prussia by the Treaty of West- 
minster, January 1756, because we had no other ally to 
whom to look. 

In the same way these two theories about British insu- 
larity or interference in foreign wars meet us in connection 
with Austria. The critics of the Duke of Marlborough 
and the promoters of the Treaty of Utrecht argued that 
it was not to our advantage to spend our blood and 
treasure in fighting the battles of an Austrian Archduke 
so as to make him King of Spain. Naturally our Austrian 
allies, left in the lurch when the Treaty of Utrecht was made, 
considered that we had deserted them. Again, Britain 
had once been the ally of Maria Theresa, but had most 
strongly advised her to come to terms with Frederick by 
the surrender of Silesia. Therefore it seemed to Maria 
that both her father and herself had been the allies of 
Britain for the advantage of Britain only, and that Austria 
had lost. Moreover, the possession of the Austrian 
Netherlands was not thought to be of much value, being 
so very far from Vienna. Maria and her minister, 
Kaunitz, would have liked to have handed over the 
Netherlands entirely to Bavaria and to have received 
compensation in South Germany. Here again it seemed 
to Maria that the benefit was Britain's and not Austria's, 
for it was Britain that was so keen that the Netherlands 



1756 ALLIES AGAINST FREDERICK 131 

should not fall into the power of France. But of course 
the leading motive in the Empress-Queen's mind was 
revenge. Probably she would have sacrificed any or 
every ally to get back Silesia from the power of the hated 
Frederick. And so was brought about that most re- 
markable alliance, quite unique of its kind, the alliance 
between France and Austria, which indeed was not 
actually signed until May 1756, four months after 
Frederick had already come to terms with Britain, but 
which Frederick and Britain had already anticipated. 
The high-spirited and noble Maria actually came to be 
the ally of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. The 
third ally was also a woman, Elizabeth, the Tsarina of 
Russia. The lead given to the Russians by Peter the 
Great was still followed. Russia was to expand towards 
the sea, and wished to secure a long stretch of the Baltic 
coast ; the power of Sweden was now trifling, and it was 
Prussia that stood in the light of Russian expansion. 
Next we take Saxony, whose Elector was likewise King 
of Poland, that vast and loosely knit country which could 
by no means cure herself of the inherent faults of her 
government, whose nobility quarrelled and thwarted her 
kings, and which had no middle class between nobles and 
serfs, yet was strong in numbers. Saxony herself lay 
straight in the path between Prussia and Austria and 
could not be neutral. Lastly Sweden was swept into the 
net of the Allies, for Sweden feared that a further 
development of Prussia would lead to a complete con- 
quest of the rest of Swedish Pomerania. 

Thus the Seven Years' War opened in 1756. Frederick 
was perfectly ready to begin, and threw his armies into 
Saxony before Maria's alliances had been really formed. 
He simply crushed Saxony, and drafted the Saxon soldiers 
into his own ranks. The first battle of this war, at 
Lobositz, was very fierce. The Austrians encountered 
the Prussians at their best, yet were not beaten. They 

9—2 



132 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

had learnt Prussian methods and were armed with iron 
ramrods like the Prussians themselves. The slaughter 
was great and equally divided between the combatants, 
but the campaign for the occupation of Saxony was 
entirely successful. 

In 1757 Frederick made another step forward and 
invaded Bohemia. This year he was less successful, and 
at the battle of Kolin, trying to work round the Austrians 
and take them in the flank, he was badly beaten and had 
to evacuate Bohemia. At the same time the Swedes had 
a force in Pomerania, and the Russians were threatening 
East Prussia. But the enemy that was nearest to Frederick 
was a mixed army of French and Germans advancing into 
mid Germany. But it was a force badly led and not 
united. The German element was simply an amalgama- 
tion of various contingents of small German States, 
summoned from the various "circles" of the Empire to 
come to Maria's assistance. They were hardly trained at 
all, and had no power of cohesion. Frederick lured this 
army to attack him, and as they made a wide sweep 
round his flank to cut him off and envelop him, he hid his 
men behind a hill, suddenly dashed out upon the French, 
and scattered them with hardly any loss to himself; so 
was fought the battle of Rossbach, the first great engage- 
ment between France and Prussia as principals. Imme- 
diately Frederick returned eastwards, where he found 
that the Allies had not gained as much ground after the 
battle of Kolin as he would have expected and, coming 
upon them at Leuthen in Silesia, not far from Breslau, he 
carried out with conspicuous success his favourite oblique 
movement by which he turned and crushed the whole 
of the Austrian left wing, and then reformed his front 
against their centre. 

In the meanwhile his ally had so far done very little 
to help him. In this same year, 1757, a Hanoverian force 
had been compelled to surrender to the French on the 



134 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

lower Elbe. Minorca was lost, and Admiral Byng was 
sacrificed to satisfy the angry cries of the nation. The 
American colonies were still scourged by the attacks of 
French and Redskins. The ministry of George II was 
absolutely incompetent and had no nerve. Yet a change 
was made and confidence restored to the nation almost at 
once. After various squabbles amongst the various frag- 
ments of the Whig party, at last a place was found in the 
ministry for Mr Pitt, and Pitt could not only borrow 
money for war through his relations with the merchants 
of London, who had confidence in him, but he also had 
a great eye for the choice of the right men for the right 
positions. When once the Newcastle-Pitt administration 
was formed there was no looking back, and a war policy 
was formulated, based upon our undoubted Sea Power. 
The British would keep the French fleets chained to the 
French coast by a series of blockades and of raids upon 
French ports; they would pour men into America; and 
in the meanwhile would contribute a small force of men 
and a very large amount of money to raise an army in 
Hanover which would secure Frederick's western flank. 
Thus had Pitt seen the error of his earlier days when he 
had attacked Carteret as a pro-Hanoverian. 

Therefore Frederick in 1758 had only to face the 
Austrians and the Russians, but the task was one of 
appalling difficulty. Every savagely fought battle cost 
him so many veterans and native Prussians that he could 
not expect the same exploits and the same devotion as 
a new year of the war dragged on, and as soon as he had 
fought the Austrians on the one side, he had to dash off 
to fight the Russians on the other. Every battle fought 
against the Russians, who were slow and apparently 
lethargic but terribly obstinate, thinned his ranks cruelly. 
The same criticism is true of the year 1759, when the 
Russians at Kunersdorf, close to Frankfurt on the Oder, 
repulsed the Prussians after a terrible flank march of 



1758-9 FREDERICK HARD PRESSED 135 

several hours over shifting sandhills, and then an Austrian 
contingent, headed by the most dashing of Frederick's 
enemies, General Laudon, turned a repulse into a crushing 
defeat. It seemed as if all had been lost. Had the 
Russians been a little more quick and a little less fond 
of booty, one hardly sees how Frederick could have sur- 
vived at all. But the Russians and the Austrians simply 
could not coalesce ; they fought as separate armies, and 
after victory they had their own interests to consult. It 
is certainly true in history that rarely does an alliance 
work smoothly, as when a Marlborough and a Eugene, or 
a Wellington and a Blucher, are combined. Another 
terrible defeat was inflicted upon the Prussians in 1759 at 
Maxen near Dresden. Frederick, however, had one bright 
gleam of success when the army of Ferdinand of Bruns- 
wick won a much needed victory at Minden on the Weser, 
where some British and Hanoverian infantry by some 
mistake charged straight against the French cavalry and 
entirely broke it. 

The British share in the war, of which Minden is but 
one detail, is of great interest. The use of Sea Power 
requires intelligent application, and therefore the study of 
the war when a great statesman thoroughly understood 
how to apply it interests everyone. Sea Power is the 
control of the greatest highway of the world ; it is of no 
value unless along that highway the forces of the con- 
trolling nation are moved for a definite purpose. Pitt had 
such a purpose, and to him Canada was the heart of the 
war, the alliance with Frederick a means to his end. 
France was distracted towards a land war by the army 
of Ferdinand. The coasts of France were threatened by 
various expeditions to Rochefort, Saint Malo, Cherbourg, 
and Le Havre, sometimes unsuccessful, sometimes appear- 
ing to be mere raids to do wanton damage, yet always 
distracting the French, who never knew where the next 
blow would fall. The main fleets kept watch, the one in 



136 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

the neighbourhood of Lisbon or Gibraltar, the other off 
Brest, effectually prevented the French fleets from com- 
bining, and won victories in 1759 in Lagos Bay and 
Quiberon Bay. Meanwhile men were poured into America; 
Louisbourg fell in 1758, Quebec in 1759, two months before 
the victory of Quiberon Bay, and Montreal in 1760. Pitt 
was almost too successful . Frederick in later days seemed 
to think that the British had only been making use of 
him so as to crush French colonial enterprise ; the argu- 
ment is unsound, for our aid was of great benefit to him, 
and he had no right to expect it to be given to him with- 
out our gaining corresponding benefit for ourselves. But 
the worst result was that the younger Pitt, imitating his 
father yet misunderstanding his main purpose, frittered 
away the British resources in 1793 onwards. Much of the 
bad feeling that has prevailed in Europe against us has 
come from the idea that we enjoy our island position to 
take advantage of European wars, and use our Sea 
Power to advance our empire under cover of the distresses 
of others; for this the second Pitt is largely responsible 
when he pilfered French sugar islands, in place of con- 
centrating all the strength of Great Britain to check the 
conquering career of the French Republic. 

In 1760 Frederick found the Russians less willing to 
fight and the Austrians less adventuresome. At Liegnitz 
in Lower Silesia, after a campaign in which his 30,000 
men were manoeuvred in the midst of 90,000 Austrians, he 
defeated his old enemy, Laudon, who attacked uphill, 
while another Austrian force under Daun, which ought 
to have co-operated, had not reached the scene of action. 
It was not a decisive victory like Leuthen, but it had a 
great result, for Daun henceforward could not be brought 
to offer open battle, and Frederick got a breathing space. 
Late in the same year, in Saxony, the initiative passed 
once more to Frederick. Daun was encamped at Torgau, 
in a position apparently impregnable. Frederick with 



i759-6i BRITISH VICTORIES 137 

the main army marched clean round the Austrians under 
the cover of forests and attacked from the north. The rest 
of the Prussians, under Ziethen, were to take the enemy in 
the rear from the south. The two forces were widely 
separated and had no means of communication, but 
Ziethen, though late, struck in at last just when Frederick 
seemed to be unable to carry the slopes upon his side and, 
after what is said to have been the bloodiest battle of the 
war, Frederick was at last able to hold up his head. 

In 1760 died Ceorge II, and the advent to our throne 
of his young grandson George III brought about new 
political combinations which ended in the break up of the 
Newcastle-Pitt administration and brought about peace. 
The old arguments against Marlborough were renewed; 
Britain, it was said, was fighting only for the benefit of 
the King of Prussia and had gained all that Britain 
wanted to gain. So a separate treaty was made between 
Britain and France, and once more the disadvantage of 
insularity was shown, for though it is said that Frederick 
at the time was content that Britain and France should 
pair off, leaving him face to face with Austria alone, yet 
in after days he would have nothing to do with any 
British ministry, seeing that under our party system 
Tories suddenly made peace after a Whig war, and 
regarding Britain as a bruised reed on which he could 
not depend. The end of the war from our point of view 
was remarkable for the entrance of Spain upon the scene 
under the conditions of the Family Compact, and our 
fleets secured for us both Havana and Manila. By the 
Treaty of Paris in 1763 Havana and Manila were restored 
to Spain; Gruadaloupe, Martinique, and St Lucia in the 
West Indies, Pondicherry and Chandernagore in India, 
were restored to France; but Canada remained ours, 
and Minorca was restored to us. Also during these years 
the French, and the native Rajahs who were supported by 
France, had been badly beaten in India. The battle of 



138 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

Plassey, 1757, was followed eight years later by the virtual 
annexation of Bengal. 

Relief at last came to Frederick. It was of little 
advantage to him that the British were so successful in 
Canada and India, and since the resignation of Pitt his 
money subsidies were cut off. Therefore in 1761 he 
seemed to be once more in a bad way. But early in 1762 
died the Tsarina Elizabeth. Peter III, her nephew, suc- 
ceeded and reversed her policy; he admired Frederick 
enormously and even offered military help. That same 
year Peter was deposed and murdered. The widow, a 
German princess from Anhalt, now began her famous 
reign as the Tsarina Catharine II. She gave no actual 
help to Frederick, but she stood neutral, and he was left 
alone to face Austria. In 1763 he made the Treaty of 
Hubertusburg with Maria, and Silesia became Prussian for 
all time. It had been an awful war for Prussia. Yet 
Frederick was able now to turn all his energies to the arts 
of peace, and Prussia recovered and was prosperous. 

The European problems between the Seven Years and 
the French Revolution were the Polish Question and the 
Eastern Question, and the chief actors were Frederick, 
and Catharine, and Maria's son, Joseph I. Various com- 
binations were made, and Catharine was at one time 
suppressing Polish rebels, at another pressing hard against 
the Turks. But there was only one short period of war 
between the Europeans. 

In 1763 the throne of Poland was vacant, and Catharine 
asserted the claims of a Pole, Stanislas Poniatowski, to be 
elected. The first partition was made in 1772, and about 
one-third of the country was taken by the three rivals. 
Prussia's share was considerable, namely West or Royal 
Prussia, which had hitherto been like a wedge between 
East Prussia and Brandenburg; but the port of Dantzig 
and the inland fortress of Thorn were excepted. 

In 1774, after a victorious campaign against the Turks 



1763 END OF THE SEVEN YEARS 139 

from which the Polish question distracted her, Catharine 
made the momentous Treaty of Kainardji with the Sultan. 
The Russians now definitely got Azov and the north coast 
of the Black Sea, and, more important, the right to protect 
the Christian subjects of Turkey. Therefore they had 
now taken the place of the Austrians as the chief oppo- 
nents of Islam. 

Joseph II, Emperor after his father's death, though 
hampered in his policy as long as Maria Theresa lived, 
was one of the most conspicuous of the " enlightened 
despots" of the century. His general idea was to give 
unity to the scattered Hapsburg dominions from the 
Netherlands to Hungary and Transylvania. The work 
was too much for him, for the local customs and the spirit 
of nationality were too strong. The Hohenzollerns, indeed, 
were able to combine Prussia with Brandenburg and out- 
lying lands, for there was no special Prussian national spirit 
which refused to be Germanised. But the older civilisation 
of the Flemish cities and the Hungarian nobles could not 
be coerced to accept a centralised government at Vienna. 
Joseph would have liked to have surrendered the Nether- 
lands altogether and to compensate himself in Bavaria. 
Indeed when the line of the old Electors died out in 1777 
he tried to annex Bavaria, but Frederick promptly inter- 
fered as protector of the rights of the individual German 
princes against a grasping Emperor — a role which his 
19th century successors exactly reversed on the theory 
that a grasping power promotes national German unity 
and the individual princes cause disunion. Frederick 
died in 1786, Joseph lived just long enough to see the 
beginnings of a Belgian Revolution which occurred with 
the French Revolution, and Catharine, dying in 1796, 
shared in the second partition of Poland. 

The War of American Independence, caused by neither 
trade restrictions nor tea so much as by temper and 
character, is a fine object lesson for any who believe in 



140 THE PREDOMINANCE OF PRUSSIA 

a nation's gratitude. Austria and Prussia acknowledged 
no indebtedness to Great Britain for services in the Spanish 
and Austrian Succession wars or the Seven Years ; had not 
we fought for our own hand in each case, and deserted our 
allies at Utrecht and Aachen and Paris ? In the same spirit 
the colonists, to save whom we had fought the French, 
had no compunction in revolting and accepting the aid of 
the same French. Of course when once it was seen in 
1777 that the colonists could hold their own, and when, 
with the advantage of their forests and wide territory, 
they surrounded and forced to surrender at Saratoga a 
small British and mercenary German force that had 
advanced from Canada too far from its base, France was 
only too willing to join in the war. It has been said that 
France is the only nation that fights for an idea, — the 
idea of chivalry or of help to be given to a struggling 
power, — but this war Avas entirely dictated by the idea of 
revenge. More than that, France secured her revenge. 
The Duke of Choiseul, at the end of the reign of Louis XV, 
took steps to improve the condition of the French navy 
and the French army which had been so very bad in the 
Seven Years' War, and the work of reorganisation was 
continued under Louis XVI. The French fleets that 
crossed the Atlantic to help the rebel Americans were well 
manned and well handled. The small bodies of French 
soldiers that were landed on the American coast were the 
pick of a reorganised and improved army. It is customary 
to look upon the British armies in America as absolutely 
inefficient and led by mere court favourites and incom- 
petent officers. It is not at all difficult to refute such an 
idea, for the more one looks into the details of the Ameri- 
can War of Independence, the more one acknowledges 
how fine a fight the British soldiers made. But unfortu- 
nately their movements were dictated from home, and 
when incompetent civilians at Westminster give orders to 
generals 3000 miles off to the west, the result is sure to 



EVENTS AFTER THE SEVEN YEARS 141 

be disunion and failure. France got her revenge when 
a French fleet on the one side and a French and American 
army on the other blockaded Lord Cornwallis in York 
Town in 1781. But France was not satisfied, and though 
Great Britain was ready to grant Independence to the 
Americans, she was forced to continue the war as against 
France, for abject submission would only have brought 
about the loss of all our West Indian islands. At no 
period in our history was such an effort made by sea for 
the very existence of our empire. Against us not only 
was the navy of France, but likewise that of Spain united 
to hers by the Family Compact ; the Dutch, after having 
quarrelled with us on the question of the right of search 
for contraband of war, were now our open enemies ; and 
the Baltic Powers formed against us an Armed Neutrality. 
Moreover in India Hyder Ali of Mysore threatened to 
destroy our settlement at Madras. But France and Spain 
did not work together. Spain demanded that an attack 
should be made upon Gibraltar, and not only the Spanish 
navy but a proportion of the French navy were kept 
distracted by this celebrated siege, and after all Gibraltar 
defied them for nearly four years, though Minorca was 
a second time lost. On one occasion plague broke out in 
the dirty Spanish ships, and was communicated to the 
French ships when they had the Channel at their mercy. 
The Dutch, keen only to maintain their trade with the 
rebels, were of little service to the French in the war. 
Finally, when Rodney's famous victory off Dominica in 
1782 brought the French to reason, they made with us the 
Treaty of Versailles, and gained nothing more than honour 
and glory and the extra load of debt which made Louis 
summon the States General in 1789. 

And finally, whereas the vile Louis XV after a reign of 
defeat and dishonour died in peace, Louis XVI, who was 
decent and honest and under whom France recovered 
herself, died on the guillotine. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The Monarchy of France made the Kevolution 
possible, perhaps inevitable. The system of royal ad- 
ministration was such that only a violent upheaval could 
alter it. There was no counter-weight, for the nobility as 
a political force was useless; its aims had been feudal, 
and the crown had broken feudalism; the castles had 
been dismantled and replaced by mansions, chateaux in a 
new sense ; nobles crowded to court, lived a life of ostenta- 
tion and extravagance, and had no voice in politics. There 
was no Whig party, as in England, composed of great 
lords whose opposition in Parliament against the Crown 
was traditional, and who could control seats in the House 
of Commons by their influence at elections; of country 
gentry of the Hampden or the Walpole type ; and of the 
merchants and bankers and lesser townsfolk with their 
nonconformist conscience. The States General had not 
met since 1614. Therefore, the royal will had no opposi- 
tion, and the royal waste of money in ambitious wars and 
court extravagance was unchecked in the absence of any- 
body able, by the powers accumulated through centuries, 
to pull tight the purse-strings. To this we add the degra- 
dation of the national character owing to the bad example 
of royal wickedness ; Louis XIV indeed had vices, yet had 
ideas of the greatness and glory of France, but Louis XV 
was simply vicious and unpatriotic. 



GRIEVANCES IN FRANCE 143 

The Monarchy had done everything for France, given 
her unity and a national life and glory in politics and 
literature, and made men think of France rather than 
a single province. There was no chance of Normandy or 
Burgundy breaking off from France, though provincial 
customs might differ. So it came to pass that when there 
were grievances and acute discontent, when the commons 
got their chance and tasted power such as they were by 
inexperience unable to use profitably, they destroyed what 
they could destroy, but they did not split France into 
fragments. The Revolutionaries of 1792 and 1793 were 
for a united France ; it was the Royalists themselves who 
were the provincial separatists in Brittany and La Vendee. 
Thus the Monarchy by making the country one made the 
Revolution solid. 

Grievances were real enough, though it may be that 
excitable writers have exaggerated much. Of actual 
serfdom and restraint of personal liberty there was little, 
and not so many political prisoners were sent to the 
Bastille as to make the destruction of that fortress-prison 
a reason for revolt. The chief reason was the terrible 
weight of taxation, aggravated by bad trade regulations 
and the existence of customs-houses on the boundaries 
between province and province so that a cheap and quick 
interchange of goods was impossible. Grinding poverty 
in the country districts was such that there was little left 
when the King's taxes were paid. The corvee, compulsory 
service on the King's roads, still remained. In the manu- 
facturing districts a free-trade treaty with England caused 
men to be out of work, for English iron and cloth were 
better and cheaper • and it was poor consolation to the men 
of Normandy and French Flanders that the vine-growers 
of Gascony had the benefit of sending their wines to Eng- 
land unhampered by duty. But, these grievances apart, 
the one thing that immediately caused the Revolution 
was taxation j the unsuccessful wars of his grandfather, 



144 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and the successful war that he had himself waged to 
help the Americans, made Louis XVI bankrupt, and he 
was living from hand to mouth. The one special feature 
of the taxation was that it fell solely on the unprivileged 
commons, and the nobles were privileged and did not 
pay. To this we add that haughtiness, frivolity, show, 
waste, and incompetence, among a caste of nobles who 
might have been leaders, aroused bitter feelings. Few 
were like the Duke of Rochefoucauld de la Liancourt, 
who alleviated distress among the out-of-work artisans of 
Normandy, and who received his reward when, after a 
short exile, he returned to France and found his estates 
kept intact for him. 

The Monarchy was overthrown, therefore, partly be- 
cause it was what Henry IV and Richelieu and Louis XIV 
had made it in promoting the unity of France, partly 
because it suffered for the ill-feeling roused by a privi- 
leged nobility. One asks why, with all its absolute power 
for good or ill, it did not suppress privileges and tax the 
nobility. To some extent the answer is that it was a hard 
thing to encounter the weight of a very numerous body, — 
very numerous because in France the sons of nobles were 
all nobles, whereas with us sons are commoners, — and 
there was no Richelieu to force taxation on them. But 
the main point is that that unique body, the Parlement of 
Paris, claimed the right to register the King's edicts. 
Often enough we find that, when a body has a right, it 
uses that right, simply and solely to show its own import- 
ance. The noblesse de la robe had no love for the real 
noblesse, but had control of the Parlement and liked to 
use its power. Louis XVI did issue edicts to remedy the 
worst abuses and tax the nobles, the Parlement refused to 
register, and he had not the force of character to compel 
them. The Monarchy in France, as in Russia and Prussia, 
and in Austria also at this date, was enlightened and 
benevolent. But the very wish to do good may be 



LES IDEES REVOLUTIONNAIRES 145 

construed amiss, and people resent reform when forced on 
them from above; in another generation, or even in the 
later life of the same monarch, the benevolence may 
vanish and the tyranny remain all the stronger. Russia 
and Prussia might profit materially by paternal despotism, 
though class distinctions were clearly cut and serfdom 
remained. The Netherlander and Hungarians under 
Austrian rule resented it. To Frenchmen it was not 
suited, for they were thinking for themselves, and knew 
how Louis XIY had done much for them but that the 
glamour of his age was disappearing, so that they were 
asking themselves whether any form of monarchy could 
be really beneficial or benevolent. Thus there was a 
current of public opinion in favour of the Parlement, 
obstinate and self-assertive, opposing reform which was 
attempted by the Monarchy for the real good of the 
nation, but the only body which could oppose. 

The fact is that behind the question of grievances 
there was an intellectual movement, and the way was 
prepared for Revolution because men were thinking as 
well as grumbling against taxation. Frenchmen read and 
think, then when the time comes are whirled into action. 
They are fascinated by les idees, use phrases until they 
are almost slaves to the words, and put them into action 
without, it may be, either thought for the future or 
experience gained from the past. Unaccustomed to self- 
government they read from Rousseau and others that 
'they had "natural rights," that they should return to the 
conditions of nature as their right. Thus when Louis XVI, 
at his wit's end to raise money, summoned at last in 1789 
the States General, all the nation was ready to secure its 
rights without quite understanding what they were or 
how they could use them. The influence of England was 
great, for both before and during our civil war there had 
been much written about the origin of kingship, the 
soldiers of the Cromwellian army had in their debating 
m. e. h. 10 



146 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

society argued about natural rights, and, far more im- 
portant, the revolted American colonists had issued their 
Declaration of Independence; Frenchmen had returned 
from America where they had fought for liberty, and had 
found in France that they themselves had no liberty 
though it was their natural right. 

As we look back at a France grumbling and talking 
we wonder whether a different King could have saved her 
from the horrors that came, whether a second manly Henry 
could have done what dull Louis XVI wanted to do but 
had not the grit to carry through. Of course a man's 
character is created by the circumstances of his up- 
bringing and subsequent life, and it is hardly conceivable 
that another King of the type of the Bearnais, joyous son 
of the south and nursling of the religious war, could be 
born and reared in selfish artificial Versailles. The specu- 
lation is unprofitable, yet forces itself on us, for over and 
over again we ask ourselves what might have happened if 
at this or that stage Louis had put his foot down. Well- 
meaning but dull he never put his foot down at the right 
time, and he always fell between two stools. He hated to 
use military force, yet threatened it just at the wrong 
moments; caused worse feeling against him on the part 
of the mob, yet did not satisfy the nobles. His brother, 
Charles of Artois, "jockey-breeched" Artois with the 
dress and the manners of a groom, had a bad influence. 
His queen, Marie Antoinette, the hated Autrichienne, 
daughter of Maria Theresa, married to him when a child 
as a result of the unnatural alliance between France and 
Austria, she whose nobly endured sufferings and death 
have made many forget her earlier influence for harm, 
could never understand the aspirations of Frenchmen. 
Yet, in any case, had Louis been a born leader of men 
and received sympathetic support in his own family, the 
wave of feeling would probably have been too strong for 
him. 



1789 THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY 147 

France had helped the Americans to be free and had 
won revenge in seeing Britain humbled, yet had piled 
up in a successful war the extra load of debt which meant 
bankruptcy. The Swiss banker, Necker, could only point 
out how bad was the financial condition and how extrava- 
gant the court. Reform was thwarted by the obstinacy 
of the Parlement. At last the States General were sum- 
moned for the first time since 1614. There were three 
Orders, and each had its own Chamber or House; the 
Nobles were 270 in number, being elected by some 5000; 
the Clergy 291, whether rich and high-placed dignitaries, 
the relations and allies of the nobles, or humble parish 
priests; and the Tiers Etat or Commons 578, composed 
largely of lawyers who had influence in their country 
districts, with a few liberal nobles who had failed to be 
elected to their own chamber. They assembled on 
May 5, 1789, bringing cahiers or note-books in which 
grievances were set forth, and even some nobles were 
or pretended to be in favour of redress and abolition 
of privileges. The place was Versailles, the Windsor of 
France. 

The first burning question was whether the three 
Chambers should sit separately or be merged into one. 
Louis wanted to propound his own scheme of reform, and 
ordered them to sit separately. The Tiers Etat, on June 20, 
excluded from the palace, met on the spur of the moment 
in the tennis-court and took an oath to uphold their policy 
of combining the three Chambers in one. Two days later 
they were summoned to hear the King's scheme and were 
again bidden to disperse, and then Mirabeau cried out 
that they would not yield except to bayonets. It was 
theatrical. But the Tiers Etat won, for they were joined 
by the poorer Clergy and by a few Liberals among the 
Nobles. Then Louis, too late, gave way, and bade the 
rest of the Clergy and Nobles unite with them. So was 
formed a single house, the National Assembly. This meant 

10—2 



148 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

that France would make her reforms for herself, not 
accept them from a benevolent despot. 

Paris began to make its voice heard and the spirit of 
riot was abroad. Philip, Duke of Orleans, descended 
from a younger brother of Louis XIV, whose name has 
always been hated by French royalists and who was 
known as Philippe Egalite, was the centre of Parisian 
disaffection. The King, coming under the influence of 
Artois and the extremists, who were angry that he had 
given way on the question of the Chambers, began to draw 
troops round Paris. But the men were not to be trusted, 
in fact often sided with the mob, while the Gardes 
Frangaises, a sort of military police of Paris, were openly 
revolutionary. On July 14 the rioters demanded arms, 
seized the Invalides, and proceeded against the Bastille ; 
the garrison forced the governor to surrender, and the 
fall of the fortress, in which only seven prisoners were 
found, and they were not brutally immured in horrible 
dungeons, has been always marked as a symbol of the fall 
of the monarchy. Artois and many nobles fled to invoke 
the aid of foreign princes. 

In Paris there were now signs of fear, for the respect- 
able classes did not want mob-rule. Louis sent the troops 
away, and seemed to accept the situation. Two appoint- 
ments were made ; Bailly, first President of the National 
Assembly, became Mayor of Paris; Lafayette, who as 
a young and ardent noble had been in America where 
Washington made much of him, became chief of the 
National Guard, a new citizen police force to which the 
Gardes Francaises were joined as a paid battalion. Such 
men were not revolutionaries, and their position seemed 
to promise a middle-class rule and a limited monarchy. 
Lafayette had better have retired on his laurels as the 
hero of America ; he had no force of character, and chiefly 
was fond of appearing in public in a fine uniform and on 
a fine horse as if he was also the hero of France. But if 



1789 SCENES IN PARIS AND VERSAILLES 149 

Paris was quiet for a time, the provinces were in an 
uproar. Following on the capture of the Bastille came 
a series of attacks upon the country chateaux, and if in 
some places not much harm was done, in others there 
were burnings and murders in plenty. On August 4 the 
National Assembly was sitting to discuss the " Rights of 
Man," and at a moment's notice, when news came of the 
guerre aux chateaux, plunged into an orgy of destruction 
which has been called "the Bartholomew of property." 
Everything was abolished, feudal privileges and rights, 
Church and Church endowments, corvee, labour of any 
kind that resembled serfdom, purchase of offices and 
places in the Parlements. Once more we consider the 
scene theatrical ; an Assembly solemnly debating on the 
interesting academic question of natural rights was con- 
verted into an agent of destructive revolution. 

In October a new regiment was brought to Versailles, 
and its officers were feted by the officers of the royal 
guards. Excitement blazed up again in Paris, for the 
mob feared there was a new scheme to use military force. 
A crowd of women and rioters on October 5 marched on 
Versailles, and Lafayette was too late in coming upon the 
scene with his paid battalion ; when he appeared, he con- 
trolled the mob for a time, but left it encamped in the 
open space outside the palace while he went to bed. Early 
in the morning of October 6 some of the mob burst into 
the palace, killed some guards, and nearly seized Marie 
Antoinette herself; Lafayette woke up and appeared at 
last on the scene, too late for the second time. Finally 
Louis, having refused throughout to use force, surrendered, 
and with his family was brought in triumph into Paris. 
Soon the National Assembly went to Paris. 

After what may be called these preliminary scenes of 
violence, — the general impression was that the rioting was 
engineered by Orleans and his party, — the bourgeoisie 
regained power, and Lafayette kept order. The National 



150 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Assembly set to work to produce a Constitution, from 
which it has been called the Constituent Assembly, and 
took the whole of 1790 and most of 1791 in producing it. 
One cannot avoid Burke's conclusion that these men, 
many of them lawyers used to subtleties, hardly one of 
them experienced to lead, and none used to self-govern- 
ment, were foredoomed to failure. They decided that 
France was to be mapped out into new areas, departments 
in place of the old provinces, and these again sub-divided, 
for local government and for elections. There was to be 
an Assembly, one Chamber only. The King was to remain, 
but was only to have a temporary veto on any measure 
passed by the Assembly. The King's Ministers were not 
to have seats in the Assembly. The Church being dis- 
established, henceforward clergy were to be considered 
as civil servants paid by the state ; glaring inequalities as 
between highly paid pluralist bishops and poor parish 
priests were swept away ; Church lands were to be sold 
for the benefit of the state, and a large number of paper 
notes, called assignats, were issued, which were to be 
redeemed as the sale of these lands was effected. Now 
on almost every point English ideas were diametrically 
opposed, and in our own history we have acknowledged 
— till quite recently — the advantage of two Houses, a 
King's veto limited only by Public Opinion, and the 
responsibility of Ministers to a Parliament in which they 
sit. But the National Assembly deliberately rejected 
English ideas, even though Mirabeau debated strongly on 
each point. This great man had been a popular leader at 
the time of the tennis-court crisis, but now he lost his 
influence. The King and the Court party considered him 
a dangerous revolutionary, the majority of the Assembly 
thought him a turncoat because he refused to follow them. 
His advice to Louis was to escape from Paris to some 
provincial centre such as Rouen, rally to him the sound 
part of the nation even at the risk of civil war, swear 



1 789-91 A CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY 151 

never to restore the old privileges and inequalities, and so 
defy both the mob and the fanciful theorists who were 
creating an unworkable constitution. But Mirabeau died 
in 1791. Meanwhile the exiled nobles, Artois and Conde 
at their head, were trying to stir Joseph II, and after 
him his brother Leopold II, to save their sister Marie 
Antoinette, and, more important than that, to restore 
them to their privileges. Meanwhile also English opinion, 
at first generally in favour of a France striving to be 
free, was turning against her, largely because of Burke's 
influence. 

In June 1791 Louis escaped from Paris, but in defiance 
of the advice of his late well-wisher Mirabeau, fled, not to 
some French town, but towards the frontier to throw him- 
self upon foreign aid. At Yarennes he was stopped and 
forced to return. As a result the chance of success 
that a limited monarchy might have had was lost. The 
Assembly voted itself to be supreme over ministers and 
officers, and the monarchy was virtually suspended. The 
more rabid revolutionaries outside were strengthened. 
Then, the Assembly drawing near to its end, the Consti- 
tution at last framed, and the King a prisoner, a queer 
self-denying ordinance was passed; no member of the 
Constituent Assembly might be a member of the new 
Legislative Assembly. 

The Legislative Assembly met October 1, 1791. Over 
two years had been spent in debates on its constitution. 
It was the outcome of the combined efforts of those who 
hoped to secure for France an ideal and permanent form 
of government. And it lasted for less than a year. The 
members were less experienced than even those of the 
defunct Constituent. There were in it many middle-class 
respectable men, supported out of doors by Bailly and 
Lafayette, by the National Guard and all who feared 
mob rule. But they were overshadowed by the Girondists, 
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1792 WAR BEGINS 153 

eloquent theorists with a love of words and no practical 
common sense, capable of talking big and forcing France 
into war, and then unable to control the war. Besides 
them was the party of the Jacobins, whose influence was 
important because they belonged to the Jacobin club, 
with headquarters at Paris in the disused convent of 
Saint Jacques, and with branches in all the towns and 
many villages of France. Organisation and influence at 
elections made the Jacobins very strong, and their repre- 
sentatives in the chamber were both fierce and earnest. 
But at first the Girondists took the lead. The question of 
foreign policy was most important. The emigres, the 
exiled nobles, had long been trying to force Austria into 
war to restore them. The Emperor now was Francis II, 
nephew of Marie Antoinette, and was young and likely 
to yield to pressure. Early in 1792 the Girondists were 
formed into a ministry, with Dumouriez as foreign 
secretary. His language was so provocative that the 
Emperor replied by calling upon the Assembly to restore 
law and order in France, to re-establish the Church, and 
respect the rights of certain German princes in Alsace. 
The Girondists forced Louis to declare war in April, 
carried away by their excitement and wish to parade les 
idees revolutionnaires. 

War once declared, the power of the extremists in 
Paris grew. The Jacobins had not wanted it, indeed had 
bitterly opposed the idea of defying Austria in the name 
of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. But they got the upper 
hand during the excitement. First the control of the 
Commune or municipality of Paris was wrested from the 
middle-class respectables, then the command of the 
National Guard, and these two bodies became the agents 
of excesses. The Prussians made alliance with Austria, 
and the Duke of Brunswick who commanded them issued 
a proclamation threatening vengeance if harm were done 
to Louis and Marie. On August 10 the mob burst into 



154 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the palace and murdered the Swiss guards; on August 29 
the Commune ordered a house-to-house visitation to search 
for arms and arrest all suspected of welcoming the 
Prussians ; from September 2 onwards the suspects were 
murdered in their prisons by a paid band of ruffians. 
Meanwhile the old royalist army, fatally weakened by 
indiscipline, was falling back from the frontier. Rocham- 
beau and Lafayette, both of them heroes of the War of 
American Independence, were in command, but the one 
resigned in disgust, and the other fled over the border 
and was kept under arrest by the enemy. Dumouriez 
went to the army, and was in position at Valmy in the 
midst of rolling and wooded country half-way between 
Paris and the frontier. It is one of the mysteries of 
military history why the Prussians did not sweep him 
aside and march straight on Paris. They were jealous of 
the Austrians, their transport was bad, disease was 
rampant, the weather was bad and the ground wet. 
Whatever the reason was, the Prussians advanced on Sep- 
tember 20 across a valley to attack the French position 
on the height; the French, mostly old royalist soldiers, but 
smitten with the new republican enthusiasm, stood firm 
and cannonaded them at long range ; the Prussians retired. 
Such was the historic "battle" of Valmy; a very few 
hundreds died, yet it was far more important than any 
great engagement with its thousands of dead and 
prisoners. On September 21 met a new assembly at 
Paris, the National Convention. The Republic, One and 
Indivisible, was proclaimed. 

Now the French retaliated. One force occupied 
Savoy, which was quite ready for revolution and annexa- 
tion to France. Another under Custine, an old royalist 
soldier and noble, pressed to the middle Rhine and 
actually occupied Mainz. Dumouriez entered the Nether- 
lands and won a pitched battle against the Austrians at 
Jemmappes near Mons, where the men charged singing a 



1792-3 THE REPUBLIC FORMED 155 

new song that had been introduced by some volunteers 
from Marseilles. The Prussians, their army spoilt by 
disease, let the weight of war fall upon the Austrians and 
were moreover far more anxious to prevent Russia from 
annexing Poland. Thus a war, provoked carelessly by 
the Girondists in their love of talk about Liberty, was so 
far successful under the control of their Jacobin rivals, 
bloodthirsty terrorists, but far more capable. 

The National Convention was now securely seated and 
dominated by the Jacobins. The Revolutionary Tribunal 
was at work sending to the newly invented guillotine all 
who sympathised with the monarchy and nobility. Louis 
was executed January 21, 1793, though his death was only 
voted by the Convention by a majority of one, and the 
Girondist members were openly overawed by the rabble 
that swarmed into the Chamber. As a result of Yalmy 
and Mainz and Jemmappes the war took a new character. 
"Country in danger" was no longer the cry, but "Natural 
frontiers." It was an obvious step, and in the language 
of the time a "natural" development. No longer banded, 
back to the wall, to defend France against monarchs who 
were in arms to save Louis and restore the Smigres, the 
Republic One and Indivisible would now spread re- 
publicanism abroad, assist all peoples who wanted to 
shake off their kings and exchange social inequalities for 
liberty, and even assist them if they had no such want. 
From this to war for war's sake, to extend the boundaries 
of France, to benefit themselves by invasion rather than 
to confer blessings on the invaded, was but a short step 
for the Revolutionaries; one more step remained to be 
taken, and then would come the purely military aggression 
of Bonaparte. In particular France, as ever, coveted the 
Austrian Netherlands and the harvests there, for the bad 
seasons and the excitement at home made famine come 
very close. What touched Britain was that the navigation 
of the Scheldt was declared to be open, and, if British 



156 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and Dutch statesmen objected that by old treaty the river 
should be closed, the plausible retort would be that no 
nations had a natural right to fetter trade, and Antwerp 
must not be stifled in order that commerce from overseas 
might be diverted, as in the last two centuries, to London 
and Amsterdam. A military republic planted in the 
Netherlands opposite to our vulnerable coast was 
dangerous, and war would come in time even if the 
British felt no sympathy with the royal family or emigres 
or ruined Church. The Convention, however, moved first 
and declared war on Britain and Holland, before Pitt 
could declare war on the Republic. 

The war of 1793 was not so happy for the Republic as 
was expected after the collapse of the Allies at and after 
Valmy. Republican enthusiasm could not take the place 
of skill and discipline. The Austrians defeated Dumouriez 
at Neerwinden in the Netherlands, and soon he fled to them. 
Mainz was recaptured by the Prussians. The peasants of 
La Vendee rose and destroyed in their Avoods and sandy 
wastes the first forces sent against them. Lyons raised 
herself against Paris; — it is noteworthy that in the west the 
peasants were royalist and the towns republican, while in 
the south-east the great cities were anti-republican and 
the peasants fierce revolutionaries; this hatred between 
town and country is characteristically French, though it 
seems to us the merest accident that it took one form in 
La Vendee and another at Lyons. Lastly Toulon called 
for aid to Lord Hood and the British fleet. But the Allies 
were fatally disunited and had no common plan. Prussia 
thought only of her share of Poland; the Austrians would 
not march straight on Paris, but wasted time over the 
border fortresses, that triple line on which Vauban had 
expended all his art ; the defenders of Mainz, released on 
parole, were available against La Vendee, and the Breton 
royalists did not move until the Vendeans were beaten; 
the British army had sunk to such small numbers in 



1793 THE REPUBLIC IN ARMS 157 

peace that it did little, while Pitt wasted what forces he 
had by not concentrating them at one place, let us say 
Toulon. But more important than the feebleness of the 
Allies was the astounding energy shown in Paris. The 
Jacobins formed a new body, the Committee of Public 
Safety, and a few resolute men able to lead worked 
wonders. Carnot organised camps where the men raised 
by a levee en masse could be trained, and by one means 
or another supplies and equipment were forthcoming. 
Generals might be incompetent, but could be removed or, 
if need be, guillotined. Aristocrats who had served the 
republic well, Custine for instance, were executed, for, 
though he had cleared Alsace and taken Mainz in 1792, 
he might desert to the Allies like Dumouriez or Lafayette. 
New men were found in time, most of them having had their 
training under the old monarchy. Moreau is a conspicuous 
instance of a civilian of no experience, like Cromwell, 
called by the crisis to be a great soldier. But Hoche, 
Pichegru, Jourdan, and above all Bonaparte, were soldiers 
already, though it must be added that they were of too 
low a rank or too young to become generals except in 
such a time of excitement. Another institution was the 
appointment of deputes en mission, who were sent to the 
army to watch the generals, to see that they did their 
duty and did not desert, also to force both towns and 
country to provide supplies; they often hampered the 
generals, but stirred them to great energy. The chief 
reform in the ranks was the creation of half-brigades, 
one battalion of regulars linked to two battalions of 
volunteers. The chief reform in the field was independent 
fighting; swarms of skirmishers were let loose at the 
enemy, who took cover and shot as they could, and who 
thus made individual keenness take the place of discipline, 
so that the stiff and serried ranks of the drilled Prussians 
and Austrians were taken by surprise; meanwhile behind 
the smoke and hidden by the skirmishers a dense column 



158 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

could be formed, and launched at the right moment at 
the enemy's weak point. In general it may be said that 
on the one hand the ex-royalists taught the art of war to 
the ardent unskilled republican levies; and though there 
might be, owing to want of discipline, more than a little 
skulking and disobedience, there was on the other hand 
republican enthusiasm and resourcefulness. Also the 
armies were not encumbered with much baggage, but 
they made war support war, i.e. helped themselves. The 
guiding power was in the hands of the Committee whose 
success foretold a military despotism in the future, even 
as the loud cry that France was fighting to give liberty 
to other countries would become a cry for war for the 
military glory of France. In the Committee the chief 
figure was Carnot, "the organiser of victory." 

The Republic, however, could not restore the old royal 
navy. The old officers were all royalists, and the old 
sailors had been drawn mostly from royalist districts such 
as Brittany. Naval discipline, once ruined, could not be 
restored in a day, whatever deputies on mission might try 
to do, and British naval victories from June 1, 1794, down 
to the day of Trafalgar prevented France from ever 
having a breathing-space in which to create a real fleet. 
Also the Revolution was fatal to the colonies of France. 
The spirit of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, bade the 
freeing of slaves in French islands, and it is the boast of 
France that she abolished slavery at a date when Britain 
was only just beginning to listen to Wilberforce and his 
story of the iniquities of the slave-trade. But black rose 
against white, and premature abolition led to many 
horrors. Also British attacks from the sea, useless as 
they were for the main purpose of the war and contri- 
buting little towards suppression of the Terror at Paris, 
ruined the trade of the French West Indies. 

During the crisis the great man in Paris was Danton, 
burly and strong, practical in character. To him, as a 



1793-4 THE REIGN OF TERROR 159 

resolute leader who could voice what so many thought, 
and could do what many wanted to see done, while the 
Girondists only talked, it was due that the country did 
not flinch before Yalmy and again after Neerwinden. 
He came from Champagne and was of bourgeois blood, 
and had purchased under the monarchy a lawyer's post. 
In the early days of the Revolution he was attached to 
the party of Orleans 1 , as was Camille Desmoulins, a 
journalist, who became his devoted friend, and the two 
had very great influence in the political clubs, first the 
Cordeliers, then the Jacobins. The greatness of Danton 
is seen in August and September 1792, when in the Con- 
vention he cried, "De l'audace, de l'audace, toujours de 
l'audace" in face of the German invasion. He did not 
originate the September massacres, nor approve, nor 
condone; but equally true is it that he did nothing to 
stop them, though he later set himself against the spirit 
of revenge so that his party got the name of the " indul- 
gents." In April 1793 he was one of the nine original 
members of the Committee of Public Safety, but he lost 
his seat in July and was not responsible for the fierce 
decrees of extermination against La Vendee and Lyons. 
One always admires a strong man who loves his country 
and liberty, who knows that great results cannot be 
attained unless some suffer; and let traitors suffer, he 
would say, if they rejoice in the advance of the Prussians 
who would bring us back to slavery. But the memory of 
his services is dimmed, when it is seen that the stone that 
he set rolling ground beneath it those who did not deserve 
to suffer. Evil passions were unchained. Marat, once a 
fashionable ladies' doctor, now ready for any excess, was 
murdered by Charlotte Corday, but the professional 
atheists and scoffers in November 1793 celebrated their 
disgusting "feast of reason" in Notre Dame. Robespierre 

1 Philip of Orleans was himself executed during the Terror, though 
he had been the chief agent of revolution and riot in 1789. 



160 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

hated such buffoonery, and with the aid of the Dantonists 
sent these men to the guillotine in March 1794. 

The character of Maximilien Robespierre is hard to 
analyse. He saw the horrors of anarchy and civil war, 
and therefore approved of massacre in Paris and fiendish 
cruelty in La Vendee if only as means to secure absolute 
power to the Committee. On Danton's retirement he was 
almost dictator in the Committee, and he wanted to 
promote the ideas of Rousseau, a life of nature, a reign of 
virtue, a worship of a Supreme Being. There was some- 
thing cold and mean in him which revolts us. He 
attacked Danton, if motives can ever be really understood, 
in a spirit of paltry jealousy, and by a charge of treason 
in connection with Orleans and Dumouriez he brought 
Danton to the guillotine in March 1794. Finally he was 
himself guillotined in July. The party who overthrew him 
and stopped the worst excesses of the Terror are known as 
the Thermidoriens, the men of the month Thermidor. 

This word reminds us what the Republic did to mark 
the beginning of a new age. The Christian era was given 
up, and a revolutionary era was substituted from the 
establishment of the Republic. Men spoke of the year 1 
of liberty. The Roman months were abolished, and new 
months were named after the seasons, Thermidor being 
the "hot" month. Weeks were replaced by decades. 
Napoleon allowed this "revolutionary calendar" to dis- 
appear quietly. Of other things which were brought in 
at this period of change, the metre and the metric system 
based on it have lasted, also the division of France by 
departments. 

We return to the military operations. In 1793 the 
Allies, as we saw, were slow in following up their successes 
at Neerwinden and Mainz, divided in their aims, and bent 
on obtaining each some particular advantage in place of 
marching on Paris. The tide turned when the British 
and Germans in British pay were forced to give up the 



1793-5 THE REPUBLIC'S VICTORIES 161 

siege of Dunkirk. Jourdan drove the Austrians out of 
north France and beyond the Sambre in the Netherlands, 
Hoche and Pichegru drove them out of Alsace and 
beyond the Rhine. Lyons was recovered and suffered 
terribly under a decree passed by the Convention; the 
same savagery was shown in the suppression of La 
Vendee, where Carrier earned special notoriety by the 
noyades when he drowned the royalists in batches. 
Bonaparte, only a lieutenant of artillery, breathed his 
spirit into the besiegers of Toulon and forced Lord Hood 
to evacuate it. In 1794 there were further victories; 
Belgium was entirely won, then Holland, and after an 
awful retreat in severe weather the Germans and British 
were driven to the Ems and Weser early in 1795. Belgium 
was annexed to France. Holland was transformed into 
the Batavian Republic. Then in 1795 Prussia made 
peace by the Treaty of Basle, acknowledging the Rhine 
as the boundary of France. 

Here we must look to the East to understand why the 
Allies were disunited and therefore unsuccessful. Details 
of the Polish and Turkish questions are not needed here,, 
but it is clear that these were connected, and as often as 
Austria and Russia turned their attention to Turkey they 
were distracted by some move of Prussia towards Poland. 
In January 1792 the Tsarina Catharine II brought a 
Turkish war to an end by the Treaty of Jassy, by which 
the Russian frontier was advanced to the river Dniester. 
Then she turned on Poland. There was a Polish crisis, 
an attempt to make a serious reform in the direction of a 
limited monarchy in imitation of the limited monarchy of 
France of 1790 — 91, the crown to be hereditary and not 
elective, ministers to be responsible to a diet, and the ex- 
cessive powers of the nobles to be cut down. This did not 
suit Catharine, for anarchy in Poland was her excuse for 
interference. The King of Prussia offered to help Poland 
if Dantzig and Thorn were unconditionally surrendered ; 
M. e. h. 11 



162 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the unlucky country was too spirited to accept; conse- 
quently lie seized Dantzig and Thorn and the district 
of Posen, and Catharine a large district from the river 
Dnieper westwards. The years of this piece of spoliation 
were the years of Valmy and Neerwinden. Austria, on 
Avhoni fell the chief burden of the French war, felt a 
natural soreness when it was found out that Russia and 
Prussia had thus come to an agreement. Overawed by 
superior force the Poles were, however, goaded into rising 
in 1794 under the patriot Kosciusko. They were no 
match for the Russians, and the final partition was made 
in 1795. This time Austria received a share, owing to 
Russian jealousy of Prussia. It is difficult to write with 
moderation on the spoliation ; the Power that did nothing* 
in the Revolutionary war obtained most of Poland, the 
Power that did little and deserted the Allies by the treaty 
of Basle obtained a good deal, and the Power that suffered 
most at the hands of France obtained a little on 
sufferance 1 . 

In 1795 the Convention was threatened by a royalist 
reaction. Like the Rump Parliament in our civil war it 
wished to prolong its life, claiming that the majority of a 
new assembly must be its members. Paris rose, and 
Bonaparte, called upon to clear the streets, did so 
effectually with "a whiff of grapeshot." A new consti- 
tution was framed, a Chamber of 500, a Council of 
Ancients of 250, and an executive Directory of live. The 
Chamber and Council were of no importance, and the 
strong rule of a few, especially after the use of cannon in 
Paris, brought France the last step nearer to military 
despotism. Carnot was one of the Directors. 

The year 1796 saw further victories. The Dutch fleet 
was at the service of France; Spain, ever hating the 
presence of the British in the Mediterranean, was openly 

1 Poland as rearranged after Napoleon's downfall was different. In 
1795 Warsaw became Prussian, in 1815 Eussian. 



1796 THE DIRECTORY 163 

the ally of France, her Bourbon king supporting the very 
Republic that had done to death his French cousin. For 
a time, in consequence, the Sea Power of the British fleet 
was challenged, especially as Ireland was in a ferment and 
expecting French aid, and our sailors were on the eve of 
mutiny. Had a Nelson held full power in the Mediter- 
ranean, the coming campaign which showed the genius of 
Bonaparte would have been impossible. The new theatre 
of the war was North Italy. The mountain passes over the 
Alps were held by the King of Sardinia (Duke of Savoy), 
who was the ally of Austria. The alternative route along 
the Riviera was difficult in the extreme; spurs of the 
mountains jut out into the sea, with deltas between where 
the valleys open into wide mouths, and all coast traffic 
had to be by water. Thus a well-handled squadron would 
paralyse an army moving along the coast, and starve it 
out by intercepting the boats bringing its supplies. 
Bonaparte, chosen for the command by Carnot, required 
the coast route for a short time till he could break through 
the mountains into the Po valley, and at this very 
moment the British naval force in the Mediterranean was 
impotent. 

Time was everything. Bonaparte had carefully studied 
the geography of the ground ; in April, feinting towards 
Genoa so as to keep the Austrians to the east, he struck 
rapidly upwards and northwards from Savona, drove a 
wedge between the Austrians and the Sardinians, won the 
watershed, and descended the northern slopes to the Po 1 . 
He overpowered the Sardinians and forced a treaty on 
the King; and this meant that he could now communicate 
with France by the Mont Cenis route, and had no need to 
use the dangerous Riviera, so that if the British regained 
their Sea Power in the Mediterranean they could not cut 
him off from France. Once safely on the Po he could 
make war support war, levy forced supplies, and satisfy 
1 See map on p. 165. 

11—2 



164 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

his men with loot. The enthusiasm of this army, which 
had hitherto enjoyed none of the glory such as had fallen 
to the armies of the Netherlands and the Rhine, was un- 
bounded ; it was never much more than 30,000 strong 
even when reinforced by drafts. 

In May he found the Austrians posted behind the Po 
and its northern tributary the Ticino. He outflanked 
them by moving quickly downstream, crossed the Po, got 
in the rear of Milan, and carried by a sudden charge the 
bridge of Lodi over the Adda. Milan surrendered and 
the whole of Lombardy was secured. 

Between Lombardy and Venetia is a narrow neck of 
land where the Mincio runs out of Lake Garda to the Po ; 
next to the east the Adige descending from the Tyrol 
swerves aside and runs parallel to the Po. On the Mincio 
are the strong fortresses of Peschiera and Mantua, on the 
Adige and in Venetian territory are Legnago and Verona, 
and these make the famous Quadrilateral. Bonaparte 
blockaded Mantua, and disregarded Venetian neutrality 
by seizing Verona. The Austrians made effort after effort 
to dislodge him. They altogether spoilt their chance of 
success on the Rhine by detaching large forces from that 
direction, and were vastly superior to him in numbers. 
But to debouch from the Alps into the plain in face of an 
active enemy was difficult. Either a large force descend- 
ing by a single road would be headed off while its rear 
would be miles too far away to help, or two forces descend- 
ing by two separate roads would find the enemy between 
them. Bonaparte by superior marching beat them which- 
ever plan they tried. When it was necessary he aban- 
doned the blockade of Mantua, knowing that he could 
resume it when the relieving armies were beaten back. 
Finally in January 1797 he occupied the plateau of Rivoli, 
which stands above the Adige, while mountains overhang 
it like an amphitheatre, and from this central position he 
hurled back all the attacks from each direction; then 



166 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

dashed off to intercept another army ; and at last reduced 
Mantua 1 . Almost at once he ascended into the Tyrol and 
fought his way to within reach of Vienna. 

Both the French and the Austrians had massed their 
main armies in 1796 on the Rhine. Here the French 
suffered from a divided command, for Jourdan on the 
middle Rhine was to cross and come down southwards to 
the Main, and Moreau was to cross from Alsace and strike 
towards Bavaria. The Austrians were under their best 
leader, the Archduke Charles, and he placed himself well 
between Jourdan and Moreau ; he detached a smaller 
force to watch Moreau' s left or northern flank, threw his 
main army on Jourdan and drove him back over the Main 
and over the Rhine, then returning upstream threatened 
to cut Moreau off from France. Only a most skilful 
retreat and fast marching saved Moreau. The Archduke 
in fact did almost exactly the same as Bonaparte. But 
his campaign was not so decisive, chiefly because he had 
to send away men to fight Bonaparte in Italy. In 1797, 
when Bonaparte was pushing up towards Vienna, the 
Archduke was called upon to oppose him and was beaten. 
In April a truce was made at Leoben. Hoche, replacing 
Jourdan, and Moreau were again over the Rhine, when 
the news of Leoben stopped them from advancing, as 
certainly they could have advanced, down the Danube. 
Thus it seemed that Bonaparte was aiming at more than 
wanning victories for France; he was winning all the 
glory for himself, and preventing Hoche and Moreau from 
winning any. Hoche died this year, and a serious re- 
publican rival was thus removed from Bonaparte's path. 
Moreau lived to do more service for France in 1800, and 
to help the Allies in 1813. 

In the meanwhile 1797 had been a critical year for 
Great Britain, the Spanish and Dutch fleets at the service 

1 Massena was general of the division which did most of the marching 
and fighting, and later under the Empire was created Duke of Rivoli. 



1797 EUROPE AFTER CAMPO FORMIO 167 

of France, Ireland in a ferment, and her own fleets 
mutinous. But Jervis in February beat the Spaniards at 
Cape St Vincent, and renewed our ascendancy in the 
Mediterranean, at the same time preventing mutiny by 
his iron discipline. The Dutch and French fleets did not 
meet for a combined descent on Ireland, the mutinies at 
Spithead and the Nore were suppressed, and the Dutch 
were finally beaten off Camperdown in October. 

The five Directors could not fail to be frightened by 
Bonaparte's successes. Carnot fled from France, and 
another who was a royalist was arrested. The Councils 
by new elections, one-third of the members retiring every 
year, were becoming royalist, and Bonaparte promptly 
overawed them by military force. In the south-east 
there was a strong royalist reaction known as the "White 
Terror/' But for the time being the main question was 
the nature of the definite treaty with Austria. This 
was arranged at Campo Forrnio, in north-east Italy, by 
Bonaparte himself, who, having now overawed the 
royalists, was determined to show that he, the victorious 
general, was master of the Directory. Austria ceded the 
Netherlands and acknowledged French rule up to the 
left bank of the Rhine; Lombardy, a part of Yenetia, 
the papal legations of Ferrara and Bologna, and the 
duchy of Modena, were formed into the Cispadane Re- 
public ; in compensation, so as to keep her quiet and leave 
Britain the sole enemy, he allowed Austria to annex 
Yenetia. The Batavian Republic, formerly Holland, was 
now virtually part of France; Savoy and Nice were 
already actually French ; Genoa was under French con- 
trol ; a Roman Republic was soon erected in place of the 
Pope's temporal dominions; and finally the Helvetian 
Republic, Switzerland under a new name, was the servant 
of France. The natural frontiers had been won, and the 
idees revolutionnaires had been in theory extended to the 
countries whether conquered by their will or against their 



168 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

will. But just as Bonaparte maintained the Directory 
against the royalist reaction till it suited his purpose to 
overthrow it in turn, so it became clear that he was 
making a pretence of creating democracies. Money con- 
tributions, loot, confiscated works of art, poured into 
France. Meanwhile there was confusion and bankruptcy 
at home, for France was living on paper money. 

Great Britain was now the only enemy of France. 
The Egyptian expedition followed, 1798 — 99. The seizure 
of Malta, the battle of the Pyramids, the battle of the 
Nile, the siege of Acre and Bonaparte's final failure, are 
a familiar story; so too is the capture of Seringapatam 
in Mysore, for our government in India was determined 
to crush Tippoo Sultan before French aid could reach 
him from Egypt. But what the Directory, or Bonaparte 
himself, or the British, expected to result from the expedi- 
tion is not clear. Had his fleet not been destroyed by 
Nelson, he was not an inch nearer to India until it had 
sailed round the whole of Africa and taken him on board, 
and time was too valuable for him to wait. Probably the 
glamour of conquest in the East was too strong for him, 
and he never seemed to realise the meaning of Sea Power. 
At any rate Nelson locked him up in Egypt, and Sydney 
Smith and the Turks turned him back from Acre 1 . 

Naturally, Bonaparte absent, the Second Coalition was 
formed in Europe. Russia for the first time took up arms 
with Austria, financed by Pitt. From Holland, where a 
mixed force of British and Russians expected fruitlessly 
the aid of Dutch sympathisers, to Italy, where the genius 
of the savage Russian Suvaroff at first carried everything 
before him, there was much fighting. On the whole the 
Allies, in spite of failure in Holland, gained ground. In 
North Italy, while Suvaroff had a free hand, almost all 
the ground won by Bonaparte in 1796 — 97 was lost in 1799, 
and Moreau was decisively beaten. Then the inevitable 
1 The engineer officer at Acre was a French royalist exile. 



1 798-1800 EGYPT, AND AFTER 169 

happened, as in most alliances. The Russians and 
Austrians were at cross purposes, and Suvaroff withdrew 
from Italy. Massena, Bonaparte^s most trusted and ablest 
lieutenant in 1796 — 97, won a victory at Zurich in Switzer- 
land and may be almost said to have saved France. Then 
Bonaparte escaped from Egypt, for a few men could slip 
through the blockading squadron where it was impossible 
for a whole army to escape on many transports. He came 
with the glory of victory in the East, the land of romance, 
and men forgot that he had completely failed there and 
had had to leave behind his whole army. Posing as the 
deliverer of France, as if Massena' s victory counted for 
nothing, he overthrew the Directory by a cowp dJetat. 
What constitutional forms he set up it is profitless to 
discuss. He was the sole ruler in France with the title of 
First Consul, the second and third consuls being ciphers 
whose very names no one cares to remember. 

In 1800 the new First Consul moved on Italy, while 
Moreau crossed the Rhine. The state of affairs in Italy 
was that the Austrians held all the valley of the Po, and 
were with British naval aid besieging Massena in Genoa. 
A British force had occupied Minorca, the King of Naples 
was our ally, and Malta was on the point of surrendering, 
so that it seems to us to be a gross blunder on the part of 
Pitt not to have sent a large British army to the Mediter- 
ranean to support the Austrians, for Bonaparte might 
have been expected to make an effort to regain the 
country where his earliest triumphs had been won. He 
chose the Great St Bernard route, and in May appeared 
on the Po, thus cutting off the Austrians besieging Genoa. 
Massena indeed surrendered Genoa, but he had held out 
just long enough. Then Bonaparte gave battle at Marengo, 
near the fortress of Alessandria, on the plain between the 
Po and the Apennines. He was outnumbered and was in 
full retreat, when a welcome reinforcement arrived under 
Desaix, who checked the Austrians, somewhat disordered 



170 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

by their pursuit, and enabled a decisive victory to be 
won : June 14. Meanwhile Moreau was manoeuvring on 
the upper Danube in Bavaria over ground which Bona- 
parte was destined to tread five years later, and finally in 
December won his great victory near Hohenlinden ; four 
bodies of Austrians advancing independently through 
forests were held up by Moreau's main army in front, 
while the French right wing worked round their flank 
and came in on their rear to ensure their defeat. The 
Treaty of Luneville followed, which was more or less on 
the same lines as that of Campo Formio. 

Once more the British alone w^ere at war. Malta fell, 
and Abercrombie's expedition to Egypt was entirely 
successful. A naval coalition, known as the Armed 
Neutrality, arrayed the Baltic powers against us in 
protest against our claim to search neutral ships for 
contraband of war, and Nelson's victory at Copenhagen 
was the result. At last the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 gave 
a short breathing space, and by it Great Britain agreed to 
restore all conquered places. 

The good done by Bonaparte's despotic rule to France 
is almost incalculable. He gave a settled government to 
a country sick of civil strife and changes. He restored 
the Church by means of the Concordat, or bargain, with 
the Pope ; he recognised Catholicism, took on himself the 
right to appoint Bishops, and reconciled the clergy who 
had acknowledged the Republic with those who had been 
non-jurors, but he refused to restore the confiscated Church 
lands. The emigres were allowed to return. The tangled 
finances were straightened out, and roads and canals were 
designed in a manner worthy of Colbert, for instance the 
upper cornice or coast-road from Nice along the Riviera. 
A system of public education, designed originally by the 
Convention, was elaborated. The great code of law, called 
afterwards the Code Napoleon, was drawn up by a com- 
mittee of lawyers, which simplified and unified all the old 



i8o2 A YEAR OF PEACE 171 

laws and customs. France was conscious that she had 
order and security together with individual liberty and 
equality as between man and man, and therefore probably 
cared little that self-government was not general. The 
critic of Bonaparte must lament that he spoilt his work 
by his continued interference in European matters, his 
military ambition, and his Oorsican love of the vendetta, 
as shown by his spite against the country which had 
foiled him in Egypt, and which his lack of Sea Power 
prevented him from touching. 

His longing to satisfy this spite hurried him into war 
against Great Britain little more than a year after the 
treaty. Ordinary prudence dictated that some five years 
at least were needed if he was to create a new fleet fit 
to face ours. But he interfered in Holland and Switzer- 
land and Italy, refused to make a commercial treaty and 
kept British goods out of France, sent an officer to report 
on the prospect of a French occupation of the Ionian 
Islands and Egypt, and generally by numerous pin-pricks, 
as we say now, and by abusive language in the Moniteur, 
which was his official newspaper, drove our prime minister 
into war. Addington, who had succeeded Pitt, refused 
to give up Malta, though the British troops had been 
loyally withdrawn from Egypt, Minorca, and all colonial 
conquests such as West Indian islands and the Cape 1 . 
"Perfide Albion" was the phrase invented to insinuate 
that the retention of Malta as security against French 
aggression was wrong, and the First Consul has seemed 
to some historians, even British, to have been in the right 
simply because he could use words recklessly. The 
Whig party believed that Great Britain and not Bona- 
parte was the aggressor, in fact that we should keep the 
Treaty of Amiens to the letter, and leave him free to 
violate treaties and again secure Egypt. The renewal of 

1 By the Treaty of Amiens we kept the Spanish island Trinidad and 
the Dutch island Ceylon. 



172 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

war in May 1803 was followed by the arrest of all the 
British then living or travelling in France, a gross viola- 
tion of the courtesies of civilisation. 

The story of the assembling of the grande armee on 
the coast, the great works undertaken at Antwerp, the 
camp at Boulogne and neighbouring ports, the collection 
of boats and war-material, the blockade of the main fleets 
in the ports of Toulon by Nelson and Brest by Cornwall's, 
and the impossibility of an invasion until those fleets could 
break out and secure the Channel, need not be repeated 
here. In 1804 there was a royalist plot against the First 
Consul's life, and as a result Pichegru, once republican 
and now royalist, was found dead in prison, and Moreau 
was exiled. To strike terror into plotters Bonaparte had 
the Duke d'Enghien, who was a Conde and therefore a 
Bourbon, seized on German soil and then shot without 
trial. In May he made the senate create him Emperor of 
the French, and in December, though he had summoned 
the Pope to Paris for the ceremony, he crowned himself 
in Notre Dame. Titles and dignities were created for 
his supporters, and eighteen generals were raised to be 
marshals. In consequence of Napoleon's new title the 
Emperor Francis styled himself Hereditary Emperor of 
Austria. The Holy Roman Empire was already disap- 
pearing in the midst of the great commotions before the 
campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

AGAINST the new Emperor was formed the Third 
Coalition by Austria, Kussia, Great Britain and Sweden, 
created and financed by Pitt, who returned to power in 
1804. What mostly interests us is to determine when 
Napoleon gave up his project of invading England so as 
to pounce on Austria instead. Clearly it would have been 
madness to cross the Channel, even if he could, and so cut 
himself off from France and leave her open to a Kussian 
and Austrian invasion. It was probably in the spring of 
1805 that he thought that Germany would be the better 
battle-ground, and was planning to make the pounce 
before Villeneuve broke out from Toulon and was pursued 
by Nelson to the West Indies. Or, ever having two strings 
to his bow, he was ready according to circumstances to 
invade England or Austria. In the summer, as Villeneuve 
tarried and the preparations of the Allies were going 
forward, he made his final plan. 

His campaign depended on the attitude of Prussia. 
At all costs Prussia must be prevented from joining the 
Allies. But there was no difficulty. The partition of 
Poland had proved the selfishness of Prussia in 1792 and 
1795, and Napoleon cleverly found another bait in 1805. 
He had already occupied Hanover. So he threw out the 
hint that he would allow the King to annex Hanover as 
the price of Prussian neutrality, while he turned his 
Boulogne army against Austria. The special advantage 



174 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

of the plan was that no British foi*ce could be brought to 
co-operate in Germany as long as Prussian ambition coveted 
Hanover ; otherwise Pitt, slow as he was to risk a counter- 
stroke by land, had plenty of men ready at Hythe, who 
could easily be shipped across as soon as the Boulogne 
camp was broken up. 

Not only were the Prussians neutral and the British 
thereby unable to help, but the Austrians and Russians 
were far separated. There were two Austrian armies, the 
one being organised by the Archduke Charles in Venetia, 
the other under Mack in Bavaria, out of touch with each 
other, and far away from the Russians, who were slowly 
coming from the east. In August Napoleon put in motion 
his various army corps from Boulogne and Antwerp and 
other places from which they threatened England, and 
each under its marshal they poured out towards the Rhine, 
thence through the Black Forest, each by its own line 
and ready to concentrate at a given point. The corps 
in Hanover joined in the movement, violating en route 
Prussian neutral territory. They burst into north Bavaria 
and cut Mack off from Vienna ; then, sweeping round him 
and advancing westwards up each bank of the Danube, 
they cornered him at Ulm. The Austrian army was 
annihilated, and finally at Ulm some 23,000 men, the 
remnants left after a fortnight's fighting, surrendered on 
October 20. Next day Trafalgar was fought. 

Pitt thought that, when the King of Prussia was angry 
at the neutrality of his land being violated, it was a good 
opportunity to send over a British force. But the usual 
troubles occurred. The Swedes and Russians did not 
co-operate as he hoped, Prussia was again deluded and 
remained neutral, and the army of 14,500 British and 
12,000 Hanoverians was finally brought home in the 
February of 1806, after Pitt's death. Long before that 
month Napoleon had entered Vienna and pushed on to 
Moravia. The Archduke Charles left Italy and was 



i8o 5 -6 NAPOLEON'S VICTORIES 175 

rallying the Austrian forces in Hungary. But the Tsar, 
Alexander I, was keen to strike a blow without waiting 
for him. Napoleon feigned to be retreating and drew 
back his right wing under Davout ; Alexander fell into 
the trap and threw forward his left to encircle the French; 
promptly Soult dashed against the Russian centre and 
broke it, and thus cut off the strung-out left; Davout 
faced round again; and thus was won the battle of 
Austerlitz, December 1805. 

The Austrians at Ulm and the Russians at Austerlitz 
having been routed separately 1 , Napoleon had no more 
need for Prussian neutrality. He had let the King of 
Prussia think that Hanover would be given to him, and 
thus kept out the British troops. Now there was no need 
to prolong the deception, and neither the British nor the 
Russians could help. The mask was thrown off, and the 
King was goaded into war. The Prussian army under the 
Duke of Brunswick advanced through central G-ermany 
to cut Napoleon off from the Rhine; Napoleon out- 
manoeuvred them and threatened to cut them off from 
Prussia. They were encumbered by heavy transport and 
dared not let him get in their rear, while he was so used 
to make his men live on the country invaded that he had 
no fear. So they retreated and were falling back down 
the Saale to reach the Elbe. He swept eastwards, then 
northwards round their flank, and sent Davout ahead to 
cut across their path. On October 14, 1806, Davout, far 
ahead of the main army, held back and finally routed at 
Auerstadt 60,000 Prussians with his one corps of 27,000 
French; he was energetic and put in his last reserves, 
while the aged generals opposed to him were slow and 
did not use all their resources, especially their great 
superiority in cavalry and guns. The same day Napoleon 
swerved to the west, crossed the Saale at Jena, and pene- 
trated through a forest ; his leading corps under Ney was 
1 There were comparatively few Austrians at Austerlitz. 



Lannes 



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LAKE 




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Battle of Austerlitz, December 2, 1805 






77ie /Tm<7 & Brunswick 
Prussian advance 



>n Oct 8 y/' 



60,000 
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27,000 
| Davout 



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Napoleon's counterstroke 




Battle of Jena-Auerstadt, October 14, 1806 



i8o 5 -7 NAPOLEON'S VICTORIES 177 

at first in great danger until he himself brought up some 
80,000 men to overwhelm 40,000. The two sets of fugi- 
tives met; and the rout was complete. Murat was then let 
loose with the cavalry, fortresses and towns surrendered, 
and Prussia was crushed at once. Thus the old army, 
formed on the ideas of Frederick the Great, drilled and 
fashioned into obedience by severity, but rusty for want 
of use, fell at one blow before the quickness of the French 
who had been learning new ideas and practising them for 
fourteen years. The horrors of conquest fell on Prussia, 
and Napoleon trod her under an iron heel, treating her 
indeed much worse than he treated any other conquered 
country. His motive was probably jealousy of the memory 
of Frederick. Whatever the motive, Prussia suffered, and 
the bitter thoroughness of the war of 1870 was the result 
of the rout of Jena-Auerstadt. 

Too far away to help the Austrian s at Ulm, too im- 
petuous to wait for the Archduke Charles at Austerlitz, 
again too far off and not ready to help the Prussians at 
Jena-Auerstadt, Tsar Alexander was still in arms, and 
a certain number of Prussians rallied to him in East 
Prussia and Poland. In February 1807 the French 
attacked him at Eylau and were victorious, but at an 
enormous cost in valuable lives. Napoleon, exhausted 
by continuous fighting in winter, fell back to recover. 
Dantzig was besieged and fell in May. In June the 
Russians, badly posted at Friedland, with a river in their 
rear and a gorge dividing their left from their centre, 
were thoroughly beaten. Alexander expected British aid, 
and our Sea Power was such that it could easily have 
been given; an army could have been landed which 
would have had no long and dangerous land march by 
which to reach the Allies, and there was no acute 
Hanoverian problem as in 1805. Such a force, if not 
in time to turn the scale at Eylau, had plenty of time 
to save Dantzig or reach Friedland. Disappointed and 
m. e. h. 12 



178 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

sore Alexander had an interview with Napoleon, and his 
first words were "I hate the English." The Treaty of 
Tilsit was the result, and Russia was for some years the 
ally of France. Meanwhile the British strength was 
wasted by Pitt's successors, as in previous years by Pitt, 
in many little expeditions ; to Italy, where an army too 
small to save Naples from the French won a victory in 
July 1806 at Maida, proving that it could fight well, but 
reaping no benefit; to Egypt and to the Dardanelles, 
where disaster ensued ; to the Cape, which was won for the 
second time and permanently; to South America, where 
the army was entangled in the streets of Buenos Aires 
and forced to surrender. The ministry seemed unable to 
understand that there was no need to hurry to conquer 
places overseas, for our navy was able to take a land 
force anywhere and at any time, but there was an urgent 
need to concentrate all our strength at that one time and 
place to help the Russians. 

Napoleon by the Berlin Decree in 1806 set up the 
Continental System by which he meant to ruin our country 
by shutting out our commerce. No British goods were to 
enter the ports of France, of the allies of France, or of the 
conquered nations. At Tilsit not only the Tsar agreed to 
bar out our trade from Russia, but also to make Sweden, 
Denmark, and Portugal, the three remaining free countries, 
do the same. Canning at once replied by an expedition 
against Copenhagen, where the Danish navy was seized 
and carried off, and fortifications and stores destroyed, 
lest they should fall into French hands. In consequence 
the name of England was hated, for we had used promptly 
all our force against a little state, whereas a few months 
earlier the same promptness and show of force might have 
saved the Russians from collapse. 

With Napoleon at the height of his power, yet begin- 
ning already to show signs of the weakness that would 
cause his ruin, it is a good opportunity to discuss his 



i8o 7 NAPOLEON AT HIS ZENITH 179 

means. He had inherited the republican enthusiasm for 
France rather than for liberty, for military glory and 
ascendancy ; the republican institution of the conscription, 
military service for the nation's good ; the republican idea 
of la carriere ouverte aux talents, all men able to rise if 
they were capable, witness Ney and Soult, the one a 
private and the other a corporal of the old royalist army. 
He had by acknowledging the Church and recalling the 
emigres, if they chose to return, mitigated the wrongs 
done by republicanism, yet without restoring confiscated 
lands. He made his allies to be devoted to his cause, 
particularly the second-rate German powers, Bavaria, 
Saxony, Wurt ember g, whom he favoured at the expense 
of Austria and Prussia. He aroused devotion in Poland, 
though without restoring the monarchy. He could com- 
mand the services of these Germans and Poles in war, and 
they were especially valuable because of their excellent 
cavalry, the arm in which France was weak. 

To get an idea of his methods we must go back to the 
Republic's war. When once the bad effects of indiscipline 
wore off, or partially wore off, this remained to the good 
that republican soldiers fought in loose order with indi- 
vidual initiative, acting like a mass of skirmishers rather 
than as a formed army, every man taking cover for him- 
self, whilst behind them a main attacking column could 
be formed. Republican generals with the fear of the 
guillotine before them always took the offensive, as suits 
the French character and a loose formation. To this we 
add the great mobility of their armies, forced as they 
were to march without large baggage trains and for the 
most part living on the produce of the countries invaded. 
Frenchmen, by nature active and difficult to repress, 
might under these conditions give trouble to their officers, 
and even under the Empire their discipline was not perfect, 
but their elan had free play. General Bonaparte won his 
first victories in Italy by using this material, studying the 

12—2 



180 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

nature of the ground so as to drive a wedge between his 
enemies, marching his divisions separately, but concen- 
trating them for battle at the right moment on the right 
point. The Emperor Napoleon, disposing of larger forces, 
created corps d'armee, each of some 30,000 men under 
a marshal, and each fully composed of foot and horse and 
guns, to do the same thing on a wider scale. But this 
involved great trust in his marshals. When things went 
well men such as Davout and Lannes could be trusted, 
Ney marched to the sound of the guns at Eylau and came 
in on the Russian rear as they were in the act of envelop- 
ing Napoleon's wing, Davout Avon at Auerstadt by putting 
in his last available reserves. But in general he preferred 
to keep everything under his own eye, and often he even 
interfered with the marshals; towards the end of his reign 
he distrusted most of them. Consequently he drew closer 
his line of battle, whereas the republican armies covered 
a wide front. This means a greater depth in proportion 
to breadth, and French armies began to fight in column 
rather than in line 1 . At Marengo, for instance, two 
battalions were deployed for attack with one in column 
in reserve ; at Austerlitz Soult advanced in columns with 
a covering screen, then threw the whole into line as the 
attack developed ; but at Eylau an entire corps was 
launched straight at the Russians in close column and 
lost 5000 out of 12,000 men. Thus the principle of the 
tactics was changing. The new idea led to victory of 
a decisive nature if a charge was successful, but an enemy 
who was well posted and could fire coolly would be able 
to overpower the column before it deployed. At Wagram 
in 1809 we shall find part of the army in line and part 
in column; in the Peninsula and again at Waterloo 
Wellington delivered his counter-attacks just as the 

1 In the little fight at Maida in South Italy, June 1806, the French 
were in line three deep, apparently the normal formation and naturally 
adopted where Napoleon was not present. 



STRATEGY AND TACTICS 181 

French were in the act of deploying heavy columns or 
just before they deployed. 

Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstadt, Friedland, are great 
names in French history. Yet one must repeat that the 
Allies altogether failed to co-operate in these two years, 
and the story of Leipzig will be different. Moreover 
Napoleon bought his victories at a great price. He was 
using up his best men, the very thing that happened to 
the Swedes after the death of Glustavus, and to Frederick 
after his first few campaigns. French conscripts and 
allied Grermans, Italians, Poles, Danes, were not equal to 
the veterans who fell at Eylau, and in all his subse- 
quent battles he had too many young French and too 
many non-French • this criticism should not be taken as 
referring to German cavalry who were most helpful to 
him. Another innovation may or may not have been 
really useful. He detached the grenadier companies of 
his infantry 1 to form a choice body, then organised it as 
his guard, and constantly raised it till the Old and Middle 
and Young Guard amounted to a large army corps con- 
sisting of cavalry and artillery as well as infantry. It is 
possible that the creation of a corps d : 'elite did harm 
by weakening the other corps in proportion and causing 
jealousy. 

We may here also discuss the new map of Europe. 
The Holy Roman Empire had already disappeared, there 
were no Electors, no Diet, no Archbishops or other clerics 
as sovereign princes with temporal power. France had 
already the left bank of the Rhine since 1795, and Hanover 
had been conquered in 1803; to these lands were added 
in 1810 the north coast and the great free cities, Bremen, 
Hamburg, and Lubeck. The Emperor of Austria was 

1 The hand-grenade that gave them their name had long ago 
disappeared, but the right-hand company of each battalion was still 
composed of the best and biggest men called grenadiers. Our ' ' First 
Guards " have been styled " Grenadiers" since Waterloo. 



182 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

still hereditary ruler of Hungary and Bohemia and 
Croatia, but lost the Tyrol. Prussia was reduced to East 
and West Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia ; her King 
might not maintain an army of more than 40,000, who 
were at the service of Napoleon, and was burdened by an 
impossible fine so that, owing to his inability to pay, the 
French troops remained permanently in garrison. Saxony 
was made a Kingdom, and the King was also Grand Duke 
of Warsaw. Bavaria was made a Kingdom, and increased 
by the annexation of the Tyrol at the expense of Austria; 
but the Tyrolese 1 revolted in 1809, and fought so bitterly 
for the cause of Austria that they only collapsed when 
the patriot, Hofer, was betrayed and shot. Wurtemberg 
became a Kingdom, and Baden a Grand Duchy. In all 
these the rulers were Germans, though Napoleon's allies. 
But in central Germany he carved out a new Kingdom of 
Westphalia from Magdeburg and Halberstadt, taken from 
Prussia, together with Brunswick and Hesse Cassel, and 
his brother Jerome was King. Between the Rhine and 
Westphalia was the Grand Duchy of Berg, conferred on 
his brother-in-law Murat, his great cavalry leader. The 
four new kingdoms, five grand duchies, and several smaller 
states, were formed into the Confederation of the Rhine, 
and had to supply soldiers at Napoleon's call. 

In place of the Batavian Republic we now find the 
Kingdom of Holland under his brother Louis; but the 
Dutch merchants hated the Berlin Decree and wanted 
commerce with England; Louis supported them and re- 
signed when unable to influence the Emperor, and then 
Holland was annexed to France. Denmark was the 
devoted adherent of France because of the British attack 
on Copenhagen. Sweden refused at first to obey the 

1 In the war of the Spanish Succession the Tyrolese were devoted to 
Austria, and again in 1848, a curious refutation of the idea that 
mountaineers always love liberty or that Austrian rule was always 
tyrannical. 



i8o 7 EUROPE AFTER TILSIT 183 

Berlin Decree, but was overawed by the Tsar Alexander ; 
British help, sent under John Moore, was of no avail as 
the King was insane ; in 1810 Napoleon consented to 
Marshal Bernadotte, a Bearnais of humble birth, accept- 
ing the title of Prince Royal 1 of Sweden. In the South, 
Savoy and Nice were already in France, and Napoleon 
added Piedmont, Genoa, Parma, Tuscany, and Rome; 
thus the farce of a Cispadane Republic disappeared. He 
formed Lombardy, Venetia, and the Papal Legations, 
into the Kingdom of Italy, and he himself was King of 
Italy, with his stepson Eugene Beauharnais as viceroy. The 
Kingdom of Naples he gave to his elder brother Joseph. 
Across the Adriatic the Illyrian coast and the Ionian 
islands were administered as provinces of France. Only 
Sardinia remained to the House of Savoy, and Sicily to 
the House of Bourbon. 

From 1807 onwards the question was, how long can 
this state of things last ? That France did an immense 
amount of good in breaking down old feudal ideas, out- 
of-date survivals, and inequalities and injustices of all 
kinds, is beyond doubt. But Frenchmen were much in 
evidence, and probably showed a great deal of contempt 
as haughty conquerors, besides living on the country when 
there was actual war. How far this feeling was general 
no one can decide, for French geniality and camaraderie 
might in time have won affection in Germany and Italy, 
even as in Belgium and Alsace. The answer to the ques- 
tion is that time was needed if France was to be popular 
and abate her military arrogance, but meanwhile two 
things made her unpopular, the call on her allies for 
troops to serve in Napoleon's wars of ambition, and the 
loss of English trade. Not only by his decree no cheap 
English cloth and cutlery could enter Europe unless 
smuggled, but also English ships could retaliate effectually 

1 He became king in 1818, and the present royal family is descended 
from him. He came from Pau, and in 1789 was a sergeant-major. 



184 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

by preventing all neutral and colonial commerce in 
tobacco, coffee, sugar 1 , and the like. Here again we see 
the importance of time. Could Napoleon remain quiet 
long enough to ruin British manufacturers by keeping their 
goods out of Europe, and to create new European manu- 
factures ? England had the start in being the first to 
open her coalfields and manufacture goods by steam 
machinery ; could she stave off bankruptcy, which over- 
production of vast quantities of cloth and other articles 
must cause in the absence of markets in Europe, by mere 
smuggling and by the discovery of new markets in the 
revolted colonies of Spain? Napoleon gave the answer. 
He invaded Spain and offended the Tsar, and the Peninsular 
War and the catastrophe of Moscow ruined him. Mean- 
while by his rearrangements in the map of Europe he was 
creating everywhere a new national feeling. The United 
Italy and the German Empire of the 19th century were 
by him first made possible. If it is a doubtful point 
whether the French were really popular in Bavaria or 
Italy, there is no doubt at all that they were loathed in 
Prussia. 

When Napoleon sent Junot to invade Portugal in 
1807, he was merely carrying out his commercial policy 
by conquering our last ally and market. But when he 
dethroned Charles of Spain and his son Ferdinand, so as 
to give the crown to Joseph 2 , he was at least not wise. 
So many nations had given way to him that he expected 
no resistance, and for a long time Spanish soldiers had 
been considered worthless. The uprising of Spain was a 
surprise, and was due to wounded national pride and 

1 The discovery that sugar could be made from beetroot dates from 
about 1760, but of course the culture of beet received a great impetus in 
Napoleon's time. Only in oar own days, however, has it been found 
possible to make sugar from beet almost as well as from cane. 

2 When Joseph moved from Naples to Spain, Murat was made King of 
Naples. 



i8o8 THE RISING OF SPAIN 185 

resentment against French military contempt and love of 
plunder. Joseph seems to have had no chance to show 
what he could do. He was clever enough, and had done 
well in Naples. But his brother never let him organise 
a civilian government in Spain in place of military rule, 
and this was just what the Spaniards hated. They cared 
little enough for the Bourbons. " They fight for freedom 
who were never free, A kingless people for a nerveless 
state." But " Pride points the path that leads to Liberty." 
Suddenly in July 1808 the French in Andalusia were 
beaten at Baylen by the old royal troops of Spain, a 
disaster due to carelessness indeed, yet reflecting great 
credit on the Spaniards, and then were forced to capitu- 
late. The British government, already beginning to send 
help, saw their chance to strike a serious blow at Napoleon, 
for this was the first nation that had risen against him as 
a nation and it had risen to some purpose. 

The great hopes conceived were soon dashed. Portugal 
indeed was freed from the French when Junot, beaten at 
Yimeira by Wellesley and his newly landed army, signed 
the Convention of Cintra. But Napoleon appeared in 
person with some 250,000 men, whether of the army of 
invasion or in the rear in France, burst into Spain, 
shattered the regular armies who had hoped to win a 
second Baylen in the north, and drove a wedge through 
to Madrid. Soult turned westwards against Burgos, and 
Lannes eastwards to besiege Saragossa. The details of 
this siege are wonderful ; when the outworks of the town 
were won, soldiers and citizens and peasants defended the 
streets with barricades, and the French had to fight every 
inch of their way till there was nothing to capture but 
a mass of ruins and putrefaction; of more than 30,000 
regulars in garrison only 8000 able-bodied men finally 
surrendered, and enormous numbers of irregulars and 
civilians had perished, and the French lost about 10,000. 
Meanwhile, the Emperor himself pushing on to Madrid, 



186 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

Sir John Moore advanced from Portugal towards Burgos. 
Too late to help the already scattered Spaniards he drew 
upon him Soult's corps, then turned and retreated on 
Corunna, fought and lost his life January 1809 ; but he 
had disorganised Napoleon's plan by dragging Soult into 
the bleak corner of Spain which it was profitless to the 
French to occupy. Behind him Napoleon had marched 
some distance, but had handed over the command to Ney 
and returned to France. 

We know that the Peninsular "War, now begun, was 
the Spanish ulcer that sapped Napoleon's strength. But 
Canning and most people at home looked on Moore's 
expedition as another failure. Luckily Lord Castlereagh 
had the wit to trust Wellesley, and grit enough both to 
defend Moore's reputation, which even some modern 
historians are too ready to slight, and to see that success 
in the war was not hopeless. Moore had said that the 
open frontier of Portugal could not be defended, and by 
this expression of opinion the government was seriously 
influenced. Wellesley so far agreed with Moore, but 
thought that something could be done at least to save 
Lisbon if the Portuguese army were reorganised with 
British help. Castlereagh prevailed, and sent out Wellesley, 
with the result that we know j he was a thorn in the side 
of the French who were conquering and holding Spain, 
for he defended Portugal till he could take the offensive 
against them. 

Soult had fought Moore in January 1809, and in March 
he occupied Oporto, but was quite out of touch with the 
French armies in central Spain. In March Wellesley 
had his instructions, in April he reached Lisbon, in May 
he drove Soult in headlong flight from Oporto. Then he 
pushed up the Tagus to support the Spaniards, and re- 
pulsed Victor at Talavera in July. But Soult made a fine 
rally and came in on his rear. So he was forced to fall 
back to Portugal. He saw that this would always happen, 



i8o 9 WAR PROBLEMS IN SPAIN 187 

that an advance into Spain with his small numbers would 
bring a superior force of French concentrated upon him, 
and that it would be better to defend Portugal alone at 
present. Without him the Spaniards raised army after 
army and were always beaten. Yet the French gained 
ground very slowly, for it was difficult for them to live on 
the country, and in parts of Spain an army might appear 
and win a battle, then have to march elsewhere, and at 
once the Spaniards would regain what they had lost. 
Bands of irregulars carried on a guerilla warfare, cutting 
off stragglers and intercepting supplies, so that more 
French soldiers were needed to hold the lines of com- 
munication than to fight battles. Still the work of 
conquest went on gradually. Large towns and the chief 
valleys were occupied. The French held the country 
between Bayonne and San Sebastian and Burgos in force 
so as to keep open their connection with France. From 
Burgos to Madrid, from Madrid down the Tagus valley 
to the Portuguese frontier, from Burgos by a line through 
Valladolid and Salamanca across several tributaries of 
the Douro, from Madrid by roads over the mountains 
to Seville and Andalusia generally, we find them in 
possession 1809 — 12. But the mountains of the north they 
occupied only partially. The eastern parts were very 
slowly conquered. Cadiz, supported by the British and 
connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, never 
fell. The whole war took up the energies of 300,000 men 
on an average year by year. 

Napoleon had quitted Spain in 1809 ; it may be that 
he had no taste for a midwinter pursuit after Moore, but 
he had a genuine reason in that trouble was brewing in 
Austria. The Spanish war was due to national feeling, 
and it seemed as if a national rising might occur in 
Germany. However, the King of Prussia was timid and 
was persuaded by the Tsar to remain quiet, and only 
the Austrians armed. For the fourth time, therefore, 



188 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

Napoleon took the field against them. The Archduke 
Charles invaded Bavaria, where at first only the two corps 
of Davout and Massena were at hand. But Napoleon 
came up quickly, soon followed by Lannes from Spain, 
and he concentrated rapidly. In April three corps of 
French, the Guard, and three corps of South Germans, 
drove the Archduke back with great loss 1 . Napoleon 
entered Vienna, while the Archduke stood at bay to 
dispute his passage of the river a few miles downstream 
at the island at Lobau. Massena, followed by Lannes, 
reached the far bank in May, and fought desperately 
with 50,000 French against the Archduke's 80,000 at the 
villages of Aspern and Essling; but his pontoon bridge 
was broken by fire-ships and flood, and 15,000 valuable 
French lives were lost while Massena lost or regained 
Essling 2 a dozen times, and Lannes was killed. Napoleon 
then withdrew from the north bank, and, having fortified 
the island of Lobau, held on for six weeks while rein- 
forcements were arriving. It was a great triumph for 
the Archduke, and it was seen that Napoleon's power, 
with so many men absent in Spain, was on the decline ; 
there were too many allied Germans in his army, too few 
good French to stand the brunt of such fighting. But 
the Archduke did nothing more than hold his ground for 
those six weeks. Then Eugene arrived from Italy, and 
Marmont from the Adriatic. In July Napoleon had 
three solid bridges between Lobau and the south bank. 
Suddenly he threw four bridges to the north bank, and 
passed 180,000 men across. The battle then raged over' 
a front of eight miles between Essling and Wagram, the 
French in a great convex curve, the Austrians in a con- 
cave. On the right Davout pushed ahead, on the left 

1 Davout was created Prince of Eckmuhl for a victory at a village of 
that name near Ratisbon : he was already Duke of Auerstadt. 

2 Massena was created Prince of Essling: he was already Duke of 
Eivoli. 



i8o 9 AUSTRIA'S FOURTH EFFORT 189 

Massena once more held Essling with desperation to 
prevent the enemy from breaking between the army and 
the river; then Napoleon launched a mighty column of 
French and Italians and Bavarians, supported by the 
G-uard, on the Austrian centre, and though it suffered 
severely it won the day, and both Davout and Massena 
struck in from the wings. The Austrians were not even 
now entirely overwhelmed,, but made peace. The Emperor 
once more seemed to be invincible. 

This year the British government made a serious 
attempt to help the Austrians by a descent on the island 
of Walcheren, on the Dutch coast. It was a costly failure. 
Antwerp, the objective, was never in danger. The men 
fell fast by marsh fever, and our military strength was 
for a time crippled, for the Walcheren men when after- 
wards sent to Portugal were still liable to fever. But 
Castlereagh, who was responsible for the expedition, was 
quite right to do something to help our allies, however 
badly the plans were laid. It was Castlereagh also who 
pinned his faith to Wellington, seeing that the policy 
best suited to the war was one of serious undertakings on 
a considerable scale. But he fought a duel with Canning 
over the Walcheren question, and both ministers resigned. 

In 1810 everything depended on Wellington, on whom 
the home authorities threw the responsibility of the de- 
cision to defend Portugal. Massena, fresh from winning 
honours at Essling, was sent to finish the war, and we 
know how he failed before the lines of Torres Yedras. 
Not only had Massena trouble with Ney and the generals 
in his immediate command, but there was no union 
between the many armies in Spain. Soult, in command 
in Andalusia, thought only of that country and the siege 
of Cadiz, so that his attempt to help Massena came too 
late and was fruitless. In fact the master mind was 
required there. Even Napoleon could not direct the war 
from Paris, and in his absence the rival marshals could 



190 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

not see what should be given up for the greater ultimate 
good. We can see that the conquest of Andalusia might 
have been postponed and Soult's forces joined to Massena' s 
to effect the more important conquest of Portugal. But 
there was also the serious difficulty ever present that too 
large an army in one district would starve. 

In 1811, having followed Massena out of Portugal, 
Wellington was, however, unable to retaliate successfully 
in Spain. But his great year was 1812. He based his 
plans on the fact just mentioned, the necessity imposed 
on Soult and Marmont, who had succeeded Massena, to 
scatter their forces, partly to hold down the country, 
partly to feed the men. Having his own men well in 
hand, his Portuguese brigades under British training 
quite efficient, and his rear and lines of supply safe, with 
his northern force he dashed at Ciudad Rodrigo and took 
it by assault ; then he crossed the mountains, joined Hill, 
who commanded the southern army, and took Badajoz by 
assault ; each fortress falling before Marmont on the one 
side, or Soult on the other, could concentrate an army to 
save it. Leaving Hill again to face Soult, he moved into 
Spain from Rodrigo, and overwhelmed Marmont at Sala- 
manca, his first decisive and offensive battle. He advanced 
and entered Madrid. That Wellington saved Spain in 
a large measure, and that the Spaniards did not solely 
save themselves from the French by their incessant efforts 
and devotion and the ubiquity of their guerilla bands, is 
proved by what now happened ; King Joseph abandoned 
Madrid and retired eastwards, and Soult entirely evacuated 
Andalusia to join him. Hill came up the Tagus to Madrid. 
Wellington pushed northwards to try to occupy Burgos. 
But the further the British advanced the smaller was their 
striking force, especially as the French rallied and con- 
centrated. Hill fell back from Madrid before Soult, 
Wellington from Burgos, and both retired to Ciudad 
Rodrigo, the retreat, as has often happened with British 



1812 CRISIS IN SPAIN AND RUSSIA 191 

armies and as happened with Moore in his march on 
Corunna, being quite disorderly. It seemed as if Welling- 
ton had after all failed. But he had won the two great 
border fortresses, he had destroyed great magazines in 
many towns, the loss of which crippled the French, and he 
had cleared Andalusia. Yet while pointing out what he 
did for Spain in a few months, — more than the native 
forces could have done in years, for Soult could have held 
Andalusia indefinitely if it had not been for Wellington, 
— we have to acknowledge that the scattering of the 
French armies owing to Spanish patriotism and energy 
enabled him to do so much. It also has to be remem- 
bered that two entire army corps, one under Suchet, the 
other in turn under Augereau and Macdonald, were 
occupied with the conquest of eastern Spain, and the 
Spaniards continued their defence, though town after 
town was taken, throughout the years 1809 — 13. British 
aid on this side was very slight and intermittent. 

Meanwhile 1812 is the year of the Russian war. The 
rupture between Napoleon and Alexander dates from 
1810, when, after the divorce of Josephine owing to her 
being childless and the Empire needing an heir, Napoleon 
made overtures to marry Alexander's sister, and then in 
fear of a refusal almost at once asked for the hand of 
Marie Louise of Austria. It was Marie Louise that he 
finally married, and she was the niece of Marie Antoinette; 
she bore him a son, the ill-fated "Aiglon." The Tsar 
would not have liked his sister to be empress, but was 
angry at the way he was treated. The serious reason of 
the war was Russia's need of British trade. The Conti- 
nental System was simply fatal to Napoleon, for Holland 
and Germany were demanding cheap British manu- 
factures and colonial produce, and he could only stop 
smuggling by stringent regulations and by the burning 
of the goods when discovered. He made his brother 
Louis resign the throne of Holland because he was not 



192 THE: NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

keen enough to suppress smuggling, and he annexed all 
the North Sea coast of Germany. The same irritation 
was felt in Italy. It existed also in France, where was 
an equally strong hatred of the Conscription and of the 
Spanish war. But national risings against Napoleon for 
the sake of commerce were not yet possible. Eussia was 
the only country that could defy him, and on Dec. 31, 1810, 
Alexander declared his ports free to British goods, a date 
when Massena's army lay impotent in Portugal, and over 
300,000 men were locked up in the Peninsula. Bernadotte, 
Prince Royal of Sweden, later threw in his lot with 
Russia. Prussia was not in a position to fight, and the 
Emperor of Austria was at present bound owing to his 
sister's marriage. 

The grand army of 325,000 men crossed the Niemen in 
June and July 1812. " Other forces, following as rear- 
guard and reserves, raised the total numbers to more than 
600,000 men. About 250,000 were French, 147,000 were 
Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine, 80,000 
Italians led by Eugene and Murat, 60,000 Poles, besides 
Illyrians, Swiss, Dutch, and even a few Spaniards and 
Portuguese, while Prussians on its left and Austrians on 
its right were to guard its flanks 1 /' The transport service 
broke down at once, horses died, and the army could 
hardly be fed. But, luckily, for all his haste Napoleon 
could not catch the Russian armies. He was lured ever 
forwards by their retreat, past Wilna, Witebsk, Smolensk, 
until at last in answer to the Russian outcry that the 
country should be defended the Tsar replaced his retreat- 
ing general, Barclay de Tolly, by a fire-eater, Kutusoff. 
Then a battle was at last fought at the village of Borodino, 
on the river Moskowa, 530 miles from the Niemen, 80 
miles west of Moscow, on September 7, that is 75 days 
from the commencement of the passage of the Niemen. 
The Russians, 140,000 strong with 640 guns, held a 

1 Kose, The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, p. 248. 



1812 THE MOSCOW CATASTROPHE 193 

semicircle of heights strengthened by several redoubts. 
A murderous attack, a counter-attack which was all but 
successful, and a second attack led to their withdrawal 
after nine hours. But Napoleon had lost 30,000 out of 
about 130,000, and he had refused to allow his G-uard to 
charge to complete his victory. He entered Moscow on 
September 14, with about 100,000 effectives and many- 
sick. 

The celebrated fire broke out that same night and 
raged for five days. More important than the fire was 
the systematic devastation of the country in direct imita- 
tion of Wellington's devastation of Portugal up to the 
lines of Torres Yedras. Possibly had there been no fire 
the retreat might have begun somewhat later, that is 
when the cold weather was nearer, and then the whole 
army and not merely almost the whole of it would have 
perished. Napoleon marched out on October 19, hoping to 
take the southern route to Smolensk. Kutusoff occupied 
so strong a position across this line that he had to take 
the route by which he had come, completely stripped 
already and bare. By November 6 the army was reduced 
to 55,000 men, and then and not till then the frost set in. 
November 27 and 28 the river Beresina was bridged and 
crossed by some 28,000 in an heroic struggle against 
70,000 Russians; then one bridge broke and the other was 
burnt, and crowds of stragglers were sacrificed. Figures 
are now of very little use to us. The remnant of the 
grand army, also the various bodies left en route as rear- 
guards and now falling in with the fugitives, were driven 
along and got across the Niemen on December 14, and 
the first rally was made at the Elbe. Napoleon hastened 
to Paris. Of all who went through the awful scenes 
Ney, created Prince of the Moskowa after the battle of 
September 7, gained the greatest reputation as a rear- 
guard fighter. The causes of the unparalleled disaster 
were not only fire and snow, but also inability to "live 

M. B. H. 13 



194 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

on the country" as the French had always done in 
Germany, because Napoleon had not prepared for a 
retreat nor created sufficient magazines at frequent 
intervals, and this simply means want of forethought. 
He had pushed on and on as the Russians fell back on 
Moscow, hoping to catch their main army and making 
them, not Moscow, the object of his advance. Thus he 
had not laid his plans for an autumn retreat over wasted 
country. 

The Russians had also had heavy losses, and were in 
no position to pursue through Germany at once. It was 
some little time before the Tsar and the King of Prussia 
came to agreement. Meanwhile on December 30 the 
Prussian General Yorck made himself a national hero 
by bargaining privately with the Russians ; the Prussian 
army corps, raised as Napoleon's flank support on the 
Baltic, deserted the French marshal, Macdonald. A 
similar Austrian corps had been covering the southern 
flank of the retreat, but it was more difficult to induce 
the Emperor of Austria to take part against Napoleon, now 
his son-in-law. Moreover Dantzig and other fortresses 
were still held by the French, and some 40,000 were rallied 
behind the Elbe at Magdeburg. But popular enthusiasm 
was great. At last, late in February 1813, the King of 
Prussia came to terms with the Tsar. In the days of 
Prussia's humiliation Scharnhorst had organised a short- 
service system by which 150,000 regular conscripts had 
been trained, and he now provided for a second reserve 
or Landwehr, and a third reserve or Landsthurm. Volun- 
teers took up the cause eagerly. As for money, few 
Prussian families can be found who have not the tradition 
of grandparents or great-grandparents bringing jewels 
and ornaments to help the "fatherland." Moreover the 
reformer Stein had brought in a scheme of self-govern- 
ment in towns which freed citizens and fostered civic 
patriotism, a step towards the abolition of rigid class 



i8i 3 RISING OF THE NATIONS 195 

distinctions, but a step only. The spirit of liberty was 
roused, and nowhere was so keen as among the students 
of the universities. It remained to be seen whether 
military skill would be found equal to the enthusiasm. 
The new Prussian army was led by Blucher, an impetuous 
cavalry officer and a bitter anti-French patriot, who had 
done his utmost at Jena and lived for revenge. The 
strategist and serious student of war who directed 
Blucher, but who erred rather on the side of over- 
caution, was Grneisenau. 

Napoleon was back again from Paris with men drawn 
from Spain, including Soult who had quarrelled with 
Joseph, and the last available conscripts and confederate 
Grermans. In May he actually won two victories, though 
he was too weak to pursue, and held a position in Silesia. 
His campaign was dictated by his anxiety to save the 
French garrisons blockaded in Dantzig and Stettin and 
elsewhere, while Davout reoccupied Hamburg and was 
expected to force his way through to the main army. 
The usual mistrust prevailed among the Allies, Prussians 
accusing Russians of backwardness. But Napoleon made 
a mistake in agreeing to a truce in June and July. In 
August the Emperor of Austria, influenced by his minister 
Metternich, and partly also by the news of Wellington's 
victory at Vittoria, declared for the Allies. With the 
Prussians and Russians in front, the Austrians in the 
right rear, the Swedes and some Grermans under Berna- 
dotte 1 covering Berlin, while Davout was quite unable 
to break through from Hamburg, Napoleon fell back to 
Dresden. There he beat the Austrians at the end of 
August. But now the Allies refused battle where he 
was in person 2 , while they fought and beat his marshals, 

i Ex-marshal of France and Crown Prince of Sweden, slow in the 
campaign, intriguing to be King of France on Napoleon's ultimate defeat. 

2 The old republican Moreau gave this advice. He was working with 
the Allies and was killed at Dresden. 

13—2 



196 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

Bernadotte for instance driving in Ney. Next, both the 
Saxons and the Bavarians deserted him. Blucher planned 
a great turning movement by the northern flank, and 
Napoleon fell back again, this time to Leipzig. Again 
the Allies did not act well together. But numbers 
favoured them. After two days of fighting, October 16 
and 18, Napoleon crossed the Elster by a single bridge, 
and when it was blown up prematurely all the corps in 
rear were sacrificed. "The Battle of the Nations" at 
Leipzig was decisive; 190,000 French had held off 300,000 
Allies, but after the collapse only 60,000 recrossed the 
Rhine. The fortresses fell one by one, though Davout 
held out at Hamburg till the autumn of 1814. 

Meanwhile Wellington made his great advance from 
Portugal. Last year he had done a great deal but had 
finally retreated. In May 1813 he struck from Ciudad 
Rodrigo, on a broad front and in a north-easterly 
direction, so as to get between Joseph and France. 
Joseph left Madrid and fell back to Burgos, thence out- 
manoeuvred to the plain of Vittoria; again outmanoeuvred 
and cut off from the direct road to France, he was beaten 
and lost practically all his army and baggage. Six weeks 
brought Wellington from Portugal to Vittoria, but six 
months were needed before he could force his way into 
France, for Soult, sent back to the post of danger, 
defended stubbornly the narrow ground between the 
Pyrenees and the sea. 

The Allies advanced to the Rhine, and in November 
1813 the monarchs and ministers met at Frankfort. The 
Austrian minister, Metternich, particularly wished not to 
humble France, for he feared Russia and had a lively 
sense of the grasping tendency of Prussia. The Tsar 
and the King were for a march on Paris and vengeance. 
Metternich prevailed, and terms were offered; Napoleon 
might retain the Rhine as a natural frontier. But he 
wanted more. So the war went on. Now Castlereagh 



1813-14 NAPOLEON AT BAY 197 

went over to Europe with full powers to act at the 
allied headquarters, and he was entirely against a Rhine 
frontier which would leave Belgium, especially Antwerp, 
in French hands. The campaign of 1814 is one of the 
most wonderful of the whole of Napoleon's career. With 
his last remaining troops, a remnant of his Gruard, con- 
scripts and national guards, he dashed from side to side 
at the Allies as they were strung out over a wide front, 
and won such victories that a retreat on their part seemed 
possible 1 . But the Tsar was firm and Castlereagh sup- 
ported him. Holland rose against the French and 
received help from England; Murat turned traitor in 
Italy and checked the loyal Eugene; Wellington, block- 
ading Bayonne, pushed into south France, everywhere 
greeted as a saviour. Thus in spite of his victories 
Napoleon was at the end of his resources, and when 
Blucher was strongly reinforced Paris surrendered on 
March 31. Then Napoleon gave way. But Wellington 
fought Soult for the last time at Toulouse after the actual 
abdication. 

The exile to Elba, the weary inaction there, the sudden 
landing on the south coast of France on March 1, 1815, 
the welcome accorded by Ney and the soldiers, the sur- 
prise of the Allied Sovereigns and the ministers who 
were sitting in congress at Vienna rearranging the map 
of Europe, lead us up to the Hundred Days. Napoleon 
had now some 200,000 men, many quite young conscripts, 
but also many good soldiers restored by the peace from 
their prisons in England and Germany, including the late 
garrisons of Hamburg, Dantzig, Magdeburg, and Stettin. 
His army was all French, a great advantage to him. But 

1 Prince Sehwarzenburg, the Austrian general, was commander-in- 
chief of all the Allies, and his was a most difficult task with three 
sovereigns present and the aspirations of three nations to satisfy. He 
was also a humane man and hated bloodshed, and therefore was out of 
place. 



198 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

it was ill assorted, and had to be organised so quickly 
that the marshals and officers and men did not know 
each other well. The Allies also had not sufficient time 
to get together their best men. The British were near at 
hand, and Wellington went straight to the Netherlands 
from Vienna; but most of his old Peninsular veterans 
were in America 1 , and his troops were, if the phrase be 
allowed, a "scratch" lot, many regiments quite raw, many 
officers and especially the staff unknown to him. The 
Prussians were occupying Rhineland and were therefore 
ready for action. The Netherlands being obviously the 
best meeting place for Blucher and Wellington, Blucher 
occupied Liege and Wellington Brussels, and their armies 
were spread over many miles till they should be ready to 
concentrate and cross the frontier into France. Blucher 
had with him some Saxons who were half-hearted and 
might desert; Wellington had the Dutch and Belgians, 
a good number of Hanoverians, and other Germans who 
were not fond of Prussia, and the first brigade of veterans 
from America actually marched on to the field of Waterloo 
a few hours before the great battle began 2 . 

Time was of the utmost value to Napoleon while the 
Austrian and Russian forces were still far away. He 
concentrated 125,000 men on the Belgian frontier, and 
on Thursday, June 15, he crossed the Sambre at Charleroi 
so as to strike his favourite wedge between Blucher and 
Wellington, whose outside wings were miles away to east 
and west. Grouchy's two army corps, supported by the 
reserve and Guard under Napoleon's own eye, were on 
the Friday launched against Blucher at Ligny on the 
road to Namur, and were victorious late in the day ; 
Ney attacked with one army corps a weak force of 

1 A war against the United States was caused in 1812 by the com- 
mercial blockade which the British kept over European ports, cotton and 
sugar and tobacco being excluded to the anger of the Americans. 

2 Several thousands arrived after Waterloo and marched to Paris. 



200 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

Wellington's command at Quatre Bras, but D'Erlon's 
corps wandering between Ney and Napoleon took part in 
neither battle, and as the British came up during the 
afternoon Wellington held his own. A controversy of 
some importance requires notice here, for German critics 
accuse Wellington of having deceived Blucher and in- 
duced him to make a stand at Ligny by promises of help 
from Quatre Bras. It is true that he reported to Blucher 
that his various brigades were nearer to Quatre Bras than 
they really were; but he was himself deceived by the 
incompetence of his own staff-officers, he had not been at 
once informed by the Prussians that they had sighted the 
French on Thursday, he had considered Blucher' s position 
at Ligny ill chosen and likely to cause defeat, and had 
promised to help him only if not attacked himself. When 
two generals combine against a common foe it is but 
natural that one should have the harder task for a time, 
but if good combination is successful in the end it is no 
dishonour that he was beaten at first. There is plenty of 
glory for both Germans and British in the Hundred Days, 
and co-operation was so rare in the wars against Napoleon 
that it seems petty to us now to attribute wanton deceit 
to Wellington whose whole career is above suspicion. 
Gneisenau 1 , chief of the Prussian staff, wished to retreat 
from Ligny eastwards towards the base and reserve corps 
at Liege; Blucher, wounded and in pain, overruled him 
and retreated northwards on Wavre so as to keep in 
touch with Wellington, calling up his reserve from Liege. 
On the Saturday Wellington fell back on Mont Saint 
Jean three miles south of the village of Waterloo, followed 
by Ney's two corps and Napoleon's reserve and Guard; 
Blucher reached Wavre, followed by Grouchy's two corps, 

1 One cannot avoid the conclusion that Gneisenau's mistrust was 
due to Wellington's prophecy that the Prussians in a badly chosen 
position at Ligny would be beaten, and modem historians repeat the 
insinuations to take attention away from the defeat. 



1815 THE END AT WATERLOO 201 

but at a very long interval as Grouchy was slow in dis- 
covering the line of retreat. Wavre is eight miles from 
the extreme left of Wellington's position, but the ground 
between was soaked with the rain that fell in torrents on 
the afternoon and all night, and there were no good paved 
cross-roads. 

On Sunday June 18 Napoleon delayed his attack on 
Wellington till midday when the ground was a little less 
sodden. Blucher, marching across, was on the French 
flank about 4 p.m., had a second corps up at 6 p.m., and 
was in such overwhelming force by 8 p.m. that the French 
were driven in headlong rout. The critical moment for 
Wellington was about 6 p.m. when Ney, by the capture 
of the farm La Haie Sainte, seemed likely to pierce his 
centre, but Napoleon was then using up his reserve 
against Blucher; yet it has also to be remembered that 
Wellington still had in hand his strong and unbeaten 
right wing which so decisively crushed Napoleon's Guard. 
Perhaps after the battle Englishmen boasted as if they 
alone won at Waterloo, disregarding the many Hano- 
verians and Brunswickers and Nassauers who fought well 
alongside them, and also making light of the help given 
by the Prussians. To-day German critics speak of the 
Prussians saving the British from destruction. Of course 
in either case the value of loyal co-operation in war is 
forgotten. As regards Grouchy and whether he ought 
to have marched to the sound of the guns, common sense 
tells us to reflect that an army with artillery and waggons 
cannot move across soft ground at a great pace, and he 
could hardly have reached Napoleon before sunset ; that, 
if critics now cannot decide on the exact meaning of 
Napoleon's orders to him, he must then have been in a 
cruel state of uncertainty; that, if he had marched 
across and found Napoleon victorious, as naturally every 
Frenchman expected, he would have been blamed for not 
advancing straight on Wavre ; and finally that the fault 



202 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

was Napoleon's for not covering the country with cavalry 
to find where the Prussians really were, for certainly on 
Sunday morning he thought he had Wellington at his 
mercy and did not expect either Blucher or Grouchy to 
come. 

Grouchy, the scape-goat, fought well that day at 
Wavre against the remaining Prussians, effected his 
escape with great cleverness, and reached Paris finally 
without loss. But it was too late for him, or for Davout 
whom Napoleon had left in command in Paris, to do 
anything more. The Emperor's fate was decided at 
Waterloo. 

What Great Britain in general and Wellington in 
particular did for Europe in those days was acknowledged 
then, for the custody of the Emperor was entrusted to 
the British, and Wellington was made commander-in-chief 
of the allied army of occupation in France. Systematic 
belittling of the nation and the man had not yet begun. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

When Napoleon fell in 1814 the Allies drew up with 
Louis XYIII the Treaty of Paris. Their war had been 
against the Empire, not against France; therefore no 
territory was taken away, no war indemnity was imposed, 
Great Britain restored most of the colonies; indeed France 
was a little larger than in 1789, for Avignon remained 
hers and did not go back to the Pope. After Waterloo 
there was a period of military occupation, also a large 
fine was inflicted, and works of art stolen by the Republic 
or the Emperor were sent back to the places to which 
they belonged. Yet even then the boundary of France 
was not altered. Lorraine and Alsace were still French. 

The Allied Powers in 1814 sent representatives to a 
Congress at Vienna, Castlereagh and Wellington being 
ours, to rearrange the map of Europe. Partly they had 
to see that France could not again start a war of ag- 
gression, partly they wanted to secure, each power for 
itself, such new territory as would reward it for its 
exertions in war. Now both Republic and Emperor had 
aroused the feeling of nationality. Whether released by 
revolutionary armies from their monarchs, or conquered 
and treated as subjects by imperial armies, Poles and 
Spaniards, Germans and Italians of all kinds, were all 
conscious of their nationality and aspiring towards free- 
dom. But the Great Powers at Vienna treated the smaller 



204 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

states as if they had no . right to aspire, and a determined 
move was made to check democracy and freedom. 

The House of Orange was restored to Holland, but the 
Stadtholder disappeared in the King of the Netherlands. 
Belgium was incorporated with Holland ; the Emperor of 
Austria did not want a country so distant from him, it 
was out of the question to restore it to Spain, and Great 
Britain was determined that France should not hold 
Antwerp. Thus for a short time the Catholic Belgians, 
whether Flemings or French-speaking Walloons or 
formerly bishop-governed Liegeois, were put with the 
Calvinistic Dutch. In the same way Norway was added 
to Sweden. 

In Italy the House of Savoy regained both Savoy and 
Piedmont, thus controlling the western Alps ; Genoa and 
the Riviera were added, giving access to the sea; and Sar- 
dinia had never been lost. Thus the Kingdom of Sardinia 
was compact, and by its geographical features strong. 
There was already promise of a future United Italy when 
the great Republic of Genoa was placed arbitrarily under 
the King, however much the citizens themselves might 
resent it. The Emperor of Austria regained Lombardy 
and secured Venetia, so that with the Dalmatian coast he 
controlled the upper Adriatic. Southwards the Duchies 
of Parma and Modena, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany 
were restored; the Pope once more ruled from Rome to 
the middle Adriatic and up to the lower course of the Po ; 
Naples and Sicily were once more joined under the House 
of Bourbon in the person of Ferdinand I ; all these were 
practically under the protection, or rather supervision, of 
Austria. The Tyrol also, her link with Italy, was re- 
covered by Austria. 

In Germany it was clear that the electors and prince- 
bishops could not be restored. The King of Saxony, the 
King of Bavaria, the King of Wurtemberg, though old 
allies of Napoleon, retained each his title. George III 



1814-15 CONGRESS OF VIENNA 205 

was restored, not as elector, but as King of Hanover. 
The King of Prussia wanted to secure Saxony for himself, 
but other powers opposed him even to the point of being 
ready to fight. The Kingdom of Saxony that we know 
was settled. Prussia however received a large part of 
Saxon territory, recovered Magdeburg and much of 
central Germany, and, most important of all, got West- 
phalia on the right bank of the middle Rhine and the 
old electorates on the left bank. Being the most powerful 
military German state Prussia was thus definitely made 
the champion of Germany as against France, taking over 
Rhineland as a bulwark of Grerman independence against 
any future Napoleon and thus being responsible for the 
safety of such fortresses as Coblenz and Mainz. More- 
over Prussia was thus marked as the destined head of a 
United Germany, especially as these Rhinelanders were 
Roman Catholics; in the Empire of 1871 Lutherans and 
Catholics came together without trouble. 

German Unity was now an idea as strong as any idea 
that had driven revolutionary France to war in 1792 and 
1793. But ideas usually lead to practical success only if 
they work slowly. In 1814 Germans were conscious of 
their common nationality, as most of them had risen 
against their French despoilers; yet some had been the 
allies of France, and had received benefits from France 
who had upset old out-of-date tyrannies. Moreover there 
were jealousies, especially between Austria and Prussia; 
Austria had her gain in Italy, Prussia in Rhineland, and 
thus it seemed to be the destiny of the one to look to the 
south and access to the Mediterranean, of the other to be 
the champion of Germany at home. But fifty years were 
yet to pass before Prussia could make a United Germany. 
Meanwhile there was no longer a nominal " empire " as in 
1792, a mere assortment of 200 or 300 fragments great 
and small. A Federation or Bund was created by the 
Congress of Vienna, with a Diet as governing body, and 



206 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

composed of 38 members; Austria, though her Emperor 
ruled over many non-German countries; five kingdoms, 
Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Hanover; several 
grand-duchies, such as Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, Hesse 
Cassel, and the two Mecklenbergs; duchies, such as Saxe- 
Coburg-Gotha ; four Free Cities, solitary representatives 
of the self-governing commercial centres of old Germany, 
viz. Frankfort, Bremen, Hamburg, Lubeck; while the 
King of Denmark was a member by holding Holstein, 
and the King of Holland by holding Luxemburg. The 
very existence of a Federation, though a mere name, 
disappointing patriots like Stein, ignored by the King of 
Prussia and the Emperor of Austria who certainly would 
not submit to orders from the Diet, at least accustomed 
men's minds to the idea of national unity. 

Poland was divided. Prussia finally gained Dantzig 
and a part of the Vistula, Austria kept G-alicia though 
Cracow was for the time a republic, but Russia had the 
Grand Duchy of Warsaw. 

Perhaps, however, the map of Europe as rearranged 
in 1814 — 15 is not so important — for the whole course of 
19th century history shows us nations bent on rearranging 
it further — as the conflict between the ideas of constitu- 
tional liberty 1 and repression. Memories of the Terror 
were such that democracy to many minds seemed to be 
equivalent to revolutionary violence, and it was a sort of 
article of faith that mobs should be at once suppressed by 
the military. Yet prospects were fairly bright in France 
herself, for Louis XVIII granted a Charter; there was 
to be a Chamber in control of taxation and legislation, 

1 The word ■ ' liberal ' ' came to be definitely applied to the nationalists 
in European countries who aspired to be free and self -governed. In 
English it was first used as a translation of libertados or liberates, usually 
by monarchical writers as a term of reproach. Lastly it was applied to 
the political party of reform, as "Whig" was out-of-date and meaningless 
in the 19th century. 



CROWNS V. DEMOCRACIES 207 

religious equality, and absence of class distinctions; lauds 
sold since 1789 could not be violently resumed by the 
returned exiles. It was for the time a minor point that 
no man had a vote for election to the Chamber unless he 
paid £13 a year in direct taxes, which meant that about 
a quarter of a million of Frenchmen voted. There was 
naturally a royalist reaction, and many suffered, for 
instance Ney who was shot as a scape-goat for the nation. 
But "France has seldom had a better government than 
it possessed between 1816 and 1820 1 ." The Tsar, im- 
pulsive as ever, swayed by the influence of the moment 
as at the time of Tilsit, gave a Constitution to Poland. 
The King of Prussia promised a Constitution. But hopes 
were soon dashed. 

In 1815 Tsar Alexander drew up a Treaty of Holy 
Alliance which he presented to the Emperor of Austria 
and the King of Prussia. It was an expression of re- 
ligious devotion in condemnation of the irreligion of the 
Republic and Napoleon. Metternich styled it " verbiage," 
mere words. But gradually this clever politician, whose 
influence over the Emperor was already great, cast his 
spell over the King and the Tsar. Young G-erman 
students were noisy and riotous in celebration of liberty ; 
an anti-national newspaper writer was suddenly murdered 
by a keen young nationalist. So the three Sovereigns, 
led by Metternich, feared riot and murder as signs of 
revolution, forgot the devotion of their peoples in the 
national rising against Napoleon in 1813, and became 
despots. Constitutions were either revoked or never 
granted. More than that, the Sovereigns bound them- 
selves to suppress popular risings in other countries. The 
Austrians crushed movements in Piedmont and Naples, 
and the French royal troops were commissioned to restore 
Ferdinand of Spain. This union of crowns to overawe 
nations has been popularly but wrongly known as the 
1 Fyffe, Modern Europe, chap. xiii. 



208 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

Holy Alliance. Meanwhile several countries were well 
governed on the whole, and in an age of peace material 
prosperity was undoubted. Yet free speech, free press, 
right to vote under a popular government, would satisfy 
humanity more than commercial gain, especially the 
educated and the student classes. In England when 
reform is in the air we think of the middle classes or 
the working classes as demanding votes, that is a voice 
in elections to a 600-years-old House of Commons; in the 
Germany and the Italy of Metternich's period of power 
there was a yearning after an ideal that had never yet 
existed, freedom to speak and write in demand of some 
national Parliamentary scheme, and the would-be revolu- 
tionists were strongest in the Universities. 

The first blow to Metternich's policy came from the 
revolted colonies of Spain, and here we have to discuss the 
policy of British statesmen. Castlereagh and Wellington 
were at home opposed to changes, whether Catholic 
Emancipation or Parliamentary Reform; abroad they 
were credited with subservience to the will of Metternich 
and the three Sovereigns. Yet they only joined with the 
three so far as to be ready to crush any new revolution 
in France, and they did not slavishly follow Metternich 
either in the suppression of Naples or in that of Spain. 
Between 1816 and 1820 Canning was in the ministry and 
equally responsible with them. Then he resigned, but 
after Castlereagh committed suicide he returned to office 
and took a strong line ; he recognised in 1823 Argentina 
and Mexico and other revolted colonies of Spain as in- 
dependent states, and thus confined the action of the 
Allied Sovereigns to Europe. Then President Monroe 
of the United States issued the celebrated declaration, 
known by his name as the Monroe Doctrine, that his 
country would prevent any European power from found- 
ing a new colony, or from interfering with the politics of 
the Latin American states. Brazil also broke away from 



1 823 METTERNICH AND CANNING 209 

Portugal, John being King of Portugal, and his son Peter 
Emperor of Brazil. We are accustomed to sneer at Latin, 
i.e. Spanish and Portuguese, America as a land of many- 
pretentious states continually engaged in civil war and 
corrupt in tone. Yet even unstable states have the right 
to work out their own redemption according to their own 
ideas. Later, in 1826, Canning sent British troops to 
Portugal to help the young Queen Maria, Peter's daughter, 
against her uncle Miguel. 

More important were the affairs of Greece. The 
problem of the subjection of Christians to the rule of 
the Sultan has always been thorny. The very idea is 
hateful, and in addition there is the memory of the days 
when the Turks were conquerors continually menacing 
Europe and the Mediterranean trade. Mohammedan rule 
was not in general very grievous; but the Turks have 
always been fatalists, it is the will of Allah, no reform 
can or need be made, though much may be promised 
when the indignation of Europe is aroused; worse than 
fatalism is the periodical outbreak of fanaticism when, in 
obedience to the original idea of their faith, they wave 
the Koran and the sword as alternatives to the " Giaour " 
or infidel. The Christian races of the Balkans have been 
various; Greeks, with traditions going back to the days 
of the old glories of Athens in art and war, and of the 
Eastern or Byzantine half of the old Roman Empire 
which for 1000 years survived the barbarian conquest of 
Rome herself, a race still Hellenic at heart though much 
mixed by intermarriage with non-Hellenic peoples from 
the North, conscious of unity in that they are members 
of the Eastern or Greek Church with their Patriarch in- 
stalled at Constantinople, prosperous enough in their way 
since the collapse of Venice gave to them the coasting- 
trade of the Levant — the Greeks of purest blood and 
readiest spirit of adventure are the sea-loving islanders — 
but with a reputation for being frivolous, fond of the 
M. e. h. 14 



210 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

pleasure of the moment, untrustworthy, and ready to cheat, 
which indeed they have only lived down in our own days ; 
Servians, belonging to the great group of Slavonic nations, 
akin to the Croats of the southern districts of the Austrian 
Empire, conscious that they had once formed an empire 
before they were overwhelmed by the Turks in the 
15th century, hating the Turk, and hating also the 
German and the Hungarian in turn, according as they 
fear the interference of either ; Rumans, whose name tells 
us that they once were subjects of the Romans and whose 
language is partly derived from Latin, a mixed race of 
partly Roman and partly barbarian Dacian blood, with 
many of their kin in eastern Hungary, sometimes afraid 
of and sometimes ready to make use of Russian inter- 
ference; Bulgarians, a peasant race descended from 
barbarian hordes who had burst into the Roman Empire, 
held down by the Turks more severely than their neigh- 
bours. For us it is difficult to think of the year 1820 
without reference to 1876 — 78 and 1912. Yet one fact 
stands out; the Christians of Europe have always been 
so jealous of each other that, just as in the days of 
Charles V or Louis XIV the Turks conquered, so in the 
19th century they remained in power though they have 
been conquered. Up to the middle of the 18th century 
Austria was the champion against Islam, after that date 
Russia came on the scene, and each has wanted and still 
wants to reach to the sea. France has a traditional in- 
terest in the Eastern Mediterranean, which dates from 
the Crusades. Britain has always thought of India, and 
three great men in turn, Wellington, Palmerston, and 
Disraeli, have looked to an intact Turkish Empire as the 
best barrier against Russian expansion. It follows that, 
whatever benefits Austria and Russia may have conferred 
on the Christian races in the past, Servia to-day fears 
the neighbouring Austrians and looks to the Russians, 
Rumania fears the Russians and looks to the Austrians. 



1821 WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 211 

We, with a century's experience, still have not made up 
our minds as a nation, though more and more forced 
to acknowledge the inherent rottenness of the Turkish 
Empire. But we are now concerned with the fortunes of 
Servia and Rumania and Bulgaria, whereas in 1820 only 
the Greeks were moving. 

A consciousness of their nationality in spite of their 
mixed blood, a revival of interest in the old Greek 
language and literature, a belief that the power of the 
Orthodox Greek Church justified their ambition to raise 
a Greek Empire on the ruins of the Turkish, led to revolt. 
Secret societies were at work and the Greek mind was 
stirred. The rebellion of Ali Pasha in Albania — the wild 
mountain land opposite to Italy, " rugged nurse of savage 
men" like their ancestors of the time of Alexander of 
Macedon and Pyrrhus, Mohammedans by conversion and 
enemies alike of Christians and of Turks — showed that 
the Turks were not invincible. At first the Greeks failed, 
for Tsar Alexander was under the spell of Metternich 
and believed that rebels against the Sultan were as bad 
as rebels against the Kings of Spain and Naples. But 
in 1821 so fierce and widespread was the rising in the 
Morea that the Turks were driven to their fortresses, and 
Tripolitza, a central inland stronghold, was captured. 
North of the G-ulf of Patras the headquarters of revolt 
was at Missolonghi, known to all because Byron came 
there to die. Cruelty and massacre stained the Greek 
name. The Turks in retaliation massacred at Constanti- 
nople and elsewhere, especially in such islands as they 
controlled. But the best Greeks were the islanders who 
gained several successes with devoted courage and great 
skill. In 1822, Ali Pasha being crushed, two regular 
Turkish armies advanced against Tripolitza and Misso- 
longhi, but were beaten back. Then came a period when 
the victorious Greeks quarrelled amongst themselves. The 
Sultan applied for help to Mehemet Ali of Egypt, his 

14—2 



212 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

nominal vassal, really an independent prince who had 
both fleet and army. Mehemet sent his adopted son, 
Ibrahim Pasha, to conquer Crete, and the disciplined but 
savage Egyptians overran the island with frightful cruelty 
in 1824; next year the Morea was invaded; from 1825 to 
1826 the Turks besieged Missolonghi in vain, but then 
Ibrahim came across and destroyed the inhabitants when 
they made a desperate sortie ; in 1827 Athens fell to the 
Turks. 

At last Europe was aroused, and Metternich's theory 
that all rebellions were wicked could not be maintained 
in face of the monstrous atrocities committed. Tsar 
Alexander I, champion of the rights of sovereigns, died 
in 1825; Nicholas I, his brother, succeeded. Russia and 
Great Britain drew together to mediate on behalf of 
Greece, and Charles X, the new King of France, joined 
them to draw up a treaty in London. This was the work 
partly of Wellington, but chiefly of Canning ; Wellington 
did not incline to strong measures beyond offers of media- 
tion, lest Russia should profit; Canning died before the 
policy of force was successful. Too late to save Misso- 
longhi or the Morea from Ibrahim's first savageries, the 
united fleets of Britain, France, and Russia, at last arrived 
in the autumn of 1827 and entered Navarino Bay. The 
army of Ibrahim still held the land, but the Turco- 
Egyptian fleet was annihilated. What happened next is 
galling to our national pride; Canning being dead, the 
British ministers withdrew from the war, and left Russia 
to continue it alone. In 1828 the Turks held their own 
in Bulgaria; in 1829 the Russians beat them badly, 
crossed the main line of the Balkans, took Adrianople, 
and pushed a vanguard towards Constantinople. But it 
is notorious that this is a difficult country, and the ap- 
proaches to the capital are nearly impossible to carry. 
The victors, far from their base, and not in strong 
numbers, were in some danger. The Sultan, however, 



1830 HOUSE OF ORLEANS IN FRANCE 213 

was not prepared to fight to the last. The Tsar made a 
show of generosity in offering terms. The result was the 
Treaty of Adrianople. 

By the treaty the Turks definitely gave up Rumania. 
Free trade and free navigation were granted to ships of 
commerce of all powers in the Dardanelles, Bosporus, and 
Black Sea. Above all, the Independence of Greece was 
assured. It was difficult to decide what next should be 
done. The crown was offered to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, 
finally to Otho of Bavaria; in 1863 G-eorge, son of 
Christian IX of Denmark and therefore brother of our 
Queen Alexandra, became King. 

In France Louis XVIII died in 1824. The last brother, 
the "jockey-breeched" Artois, who had been the most 
rabid of the anti-revolutionists and emigres of 1789, 
succeeded as Charles X. France had been fairly quiet 
after 18 15, with a Parliamentary government but high 
franchise. Now under Charles X the royalist reaction 
was more pronounced, and he tried to weaken and even 
destroy the Constitution. In 1830 there was a day of 
riots and barricades, the troops were badly handled and 
even deserted to the popular side, and the Louvre and 
Tuileries were seized. Charles resigned in favour of his 
grandson, the Count of Chambord, known to all French 
royalists as Henry V. But finally Louis Philippe, Duke 
of Orleans, son of " Egalite " who played so mean a part 
in 1789, was accepted as King "of the French," not "of 
France." In the eyes of true legitimists he and his line 
have always been renegades unworthy of respect. He 
was accused of having promised to support Henry V and 
then betrayed him. But he was certainly honest, though 
dull and unable to inspire enthusiasm. Accepted as 
King he waved the tricolor from the balcony of the 
Hotel de Ville, and was publicly embraced by the aged 
Lafayette. Charles X fled to England, and later died 
in Austria. Henry Y, sole hope of the white flag and 



214 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

golden lilies of the senior line of Bourbon, died childless 
in 1883. 

In 1830 also the Belgians rose to throw off their con- 
nection with Holland. A strongly Catholic people they 
had been in 1814 put under the House of Orange, though 
their ancestors had preferred the rule of Spain and their 
fathers had been content to be incorporated with France. 
Their grievance was that the Dutch language was used 
officially and Dutchmen were put into all high offices. 
Britain and France interfered to help them, and the 
Dutch garrison of Antwerp had to be besieged and forced 
to surrender. Louis Philippe wished to make one of his 
sons king, but the Powers were hostile though the 
Belgians themselves would have accepted him. Finally 
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg 1 , who had refused Greece, was 
made King of the Belgians. Under their German kings 
the Belgians have prospered exceedingly; they have 
made the most of their coal and iron, and after the 
lapse of some centuries have proved that they possess 

1 Duke of Coburg, lineally descended from 

the Elector of Saxony who lost the electorate in 1547 



"Victoria 

m. 

Duke of Kent 



Ernest 

m. 
Louise of Gotha 

I 

I -| 

I I 

Ernest Albert m. Queen Victoria 
d. 1893 



Ferdinand 

I 
Son 

I 

Ferdinand 

Prince of Bulgaria 1887 

Tsar of Bulgaria 1908 



Leopold II 
d. 1909 



Leopold I 

King of the 

Belgians 1831 

m. 

(1) Charlotte 

d. of George IV 

(2) Louise d. of 

Louis Philippe 

I 
I 
I 

H 



Philip 

I 
Albert I 



1830 INDEPENDENCE OF BELGIUM 215 

by heredity the manufacturing skill which made medieval 
Flanders famous. This did not indeed result at once, 
for the Dutch, being enemies and commercial rivals and 
holding the mouth of the Scheldt, prevented Antwerp at 
first from having a free commerce. But in 1863 by treaty 
tolls on the river navigation were removed, and since 
then the trade of Antwerp has advanced enormously, so 
that she has been a serious rival to London. But it 
has always been to our interest to protect Belgium, and 
hitherto no armed power has violated the neutrality of 
her soil, not even in 1870. 

A third event occurred in 1830, a revolt in Poland ; of 
course the revolution in Paris which turned out Charles X 
precipitated both the Belgian and the Polish movements, 
but this one came two years too late, for in 1828 the 
Russian forces were locked up in Turkey but in 1830 — 31 
were free to act. Alexander I had allowed a Diet to sit, 
and he had ruled as King of Poland, not as Tsar; but 
Nicholas I governed more directly by Russians. The 
Poles fought well but were beaten. This was in general 
a period of unrest. Great Britain was in a turmoil over 
Catholic Emancipation and the Reform of Parliament, 
which came on top of years of discontent caused by 
consciousness of bad laws and customs and by the use 
of steam machinery. Secret societies, particularly the 
Carbonari, i.e. Charcoal-burners, were plotting in Italy; 
there was an insurrection at Bologna in the Papal States 
which was suppressed by the Austrians. Mazzini, the 
ardent Genoese patriot and arch-conspirator, came to 
the front and preached a high ideal of nationalism, but 
the House of Savoy did not sympathise and Mazzini was 
for a time imprisoned. In Germany there was much 
excitement and talk, and risings took place, but the 
Federal Diet, if useful for nothing else, was used by 
Metternich to empower the German sovereigns to use 
force each in his own state. However, one good thing 



216 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

was seen; under the lead of Prussia was formed the 
Zollverein, the Customs-Union, which treated Germany 
as a whole so that foreign goods were taxed at the 
common boundary only, not at the frontier between state 
and state. This was a great step towards a political pan- 
German Union. Prussia was despotic but enlightened as 
regards commercial progress, and doubtless increasing 
wealth compensated for lack of free speech and a free 
press. But Austria held aloof, and the time was fore- 
shadowed when the Zollverein would become an Empire 
excluding Austria. 

For eighteen years, 1830 — 48, France settled down 
under a constitutional and unexciting government. Louis 
Philippe was le roi bourgeois. The one really important 
fact of his reign is the conquest of Algeria, whose ap- 
pearance to-day is a fine tribute to French energy and 
ability to rule, where the army has had a sphere of 
activity — much severity was at first shown towards the 
Arab tribes, but this may be forgotten in consideration 
of what France has done for Africa — and where engineers 
have had their chance to make barren places fertile. The 
conquest had begun under Charles X, but the real work 
was done under the Orleanist. In 1839 — 40 French 
attention was drawn to Egypt, as to a magnet, for 
Bonaparte's invasion of 1798 seemed to mark the country 
as France's own. Ibrahim Pasha invaded Syria, and four 
Great Powers combined to force him to retire. For a 
time it seemed as though France, as Egypt's natural 
protector, would defy Europe to support him. But the 
danger passed away, though there was talk of revenge 
for Waterloo and anger at having to submit to Europe's 
dictation. In 1846 Louis Philippe trickily brought about 
the marriage of one of his sons to a Spanish princess in 
defiance of his pledged word, and his minister Guizot 1 

1 One of the greatest historians that France has produced. Thiers 
and Hanotaux have also shown that statesmen can be deeply learned 



1848 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS 217 

came badly out of the business. Our foreign minister on 
these two occasions when British and French interests 
clashed was Lord Palmers ton. 

Since the failure of the movements for reform in 1830 
there was up to 1848 a seething of discontent. Mazzini 
was preaching in exile his ideal of a Republican United 
Italy, and prisons in Rome and Naples were full of con- 
spirators. Others looked for the deliverer to Charles 
Albert of Savoy and Sardinia. A new pope, Pio Nono, 
elected in 1846, released political prisoners and was hailed 
as the coming champion. " Little was done ; not much was 
actually promised; everything was believed 1 ." Kossuth 
was at the head of a new movement in Hungary to com- 
bine the ideas of liberalism, as in western Europe, with 
nationalism, that is to say to reconcile democracy with 
the aristocratic feelings of the Hungarian nobles, who 
disliked Austrian rule, yet did not wish their own peasants 
to be free. In France the writings of leaders of thought, 
some of them men of abstract theories on socialism, some 
practical socialists such as Louis Blanc who preached 
"the right to work," were as important as the writings 
of Rousseau in preparing the way for revolution. 

The explosion suddenly occurred in Paris in February 
1848. Louis Philippe promptly fled, and as he had in- 
vested much money in England during his reign he and 
his family were safe and well off . A provisional govern- 
ment sat, Lamartine the poet and Louis Blanc the socialist 
were members, and a Republic was certain, for no change 
of dynasty was possible as in 1830. But was it to be a 
Republic of extremists under the red flag, or of moderates 
under the tricolor ? Lamartine spoke burning words 
against the red flag. But the ideal of Louis Blanc was 

writers. In our own country, though many of our statesmen have been 
delightful men of letters, only Mr Bryce rivals the French as a scholarly 
historian. 

1 Fyffe, chap, xvm, 



218 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

put to the test, and, as has so often happened in France 
when a phrase runs from mouth to mouth, the putting 
into practice of "the right to work" led to results both 
ludicrous and tragic. It is very easy indeed to sneer at 
" national workshops/' where workmen were paid but 
might or might not work, at commerce and industry 
thrown into confusion, private enterprise at a standstill, 
and workmen nocking from the country into Paris where 
the "right to work" meant pay for no work. But the 
scheme was not loyally carried out by the minister 
charged with the work, and he simply put crowds of 
men to clear the ground for two railway stations and, 
when that job was finished, to dig up earth and put it 
back again in a great open space. In May 117,000 men 
were working for eight francs a week, mechanics and 
artisans all put to useless unskilled labour. Failure was 
inevitable, but Louis Blanc had the right to complain 
that his idea was merely caricatured. Worse still, the 
men were put into the National Guard, armed but not 
uniformed. An Assembly met, and in the voting every 
Frenchman over 21 years had a vote, i.e. universal man- 
hood suffrage. The middle classes were frightened, the 
peasants were angry because the Parisian workmen were 
paid for doing nothing. So the Assembly closed the 
national workshops. The result was inevitable as the 
workmen had arms; barricades appeared in the streets, 
and the only remedy was military force. General 
Cavaignac was given a free hand, and in four days after 
desperate fighting he stormed the barricades, June 23 
to 26. 

The extremists and socialists were now crushed, and 
thousands were deported without trial. A Constitution 
was drawn up, and France was to be governed by a 
Legislative Assembly and a President; but unluckily 
the relations between Assembly and President were left 
vague. Louis Napoleon, son of the ex-King Louis of 



1848 THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC 219 

Holland, nephew of the great Napoleon, came to the front. 
At the presidential election under manhood suffrage he 
received 5§ millions of votes, Cavaignac 1J millions, the 
Republican leaders merely a few thousands. Moderates, 
royalists, imperialists, had combined to vote for him for 
various reasons; fear of a new Terror and Jacobinism, 
disgust at the socialistic fiasco, the revival of the 
" Napoleonic legend," i.e. forgetf ulness of the harm done 
by the uncle and thoughts of the old days when France 
was glorious in war, all helped the nephew. He was only 
known for having twice tried to raise a military revolt 
against Louis Philippe and twice failed abjectly. He 
believed in himself as "the man of destiny." France 
seemed to see in him and his name her sole defence 
against a "Red" Republic, and we in judging him and 
France are apt to forget that we know about 1870. 

In Italy revolution, inspired by what had happened in 
Paris, broke out first in Milan in March. Barricades were 
run up in the narrow streets 1 ; the Austrian troops were 
powerless and evacuated the city. Venice rose under 
Daniel Manin and proclaimed the Republic of St Mark. 
In Vienna there was also revolution, and Metternich fled. 
Tension between Austria and Hungary was acute. There- 
fore when their tyrant was in difficulties — and Austria 
was to Italians the arch-tyrant, ever supporting the Pope 
and Dukes and King of Naples — it was not in human 
nature to be prudent. Charles Albert of Savoy, deaf 
hitherto to the idea of freedom, saw his chance to head 
United Italy, put in motion his regular army, and entered 
Milan. Volunteers swarmed in; all Lombardy was roused, 
and even the Pope — Pius IX it must be remembered was 
thought to be a liberal — and Ferdinand of Naples sent 
troops to the Po. But the ardent Republicans of Italy 
did not like the idea of a king leading them, and it would 

1 Many modern Italian towns have been entirely rebuilt with very 
wide streets, and in the Milan of to-day barricades would be useless. 



220 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

have required great military skill to use so mixed a force. 
The Austrians did not evacuate Italy, but lay in strength 
in the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, Peschiera and 
Mantua on the Mincio, Verona and Legnago on the 
Adige, a country which had taxed all the energy of 
Bonaparte in 1796 — 97. Their veteran General Radetsky, 
reinforced from Austria, began to make head against the 
towns of Venetia, and in July beat Charles Albert at 
Custozza near Mantua. The great movement now col- 
lapsed. Charles Albert fled, and did not attempt to make 
a stand at Milan which the Austrians at once regained. 
If Radetsky had not had his hands full, Venice still in 
arms, flying bands still covering the country, the govern- 
ment of Lombardy to be reorganised, he could easily 
have invaded Piedmont and reduced Charles Albert to 
extremities. 

Rioting and barricades were also the order of the day 
at Vienna and Prague, and the rioters were both students 
and workmen; the bitterness of the poorer educated classes 
against nobles and government officials and the military, 
against the gagging of free speech and free press, was 
always a factor in continental revolutions. General 
Windischgratz conquered Bohemia in June, but not till 
October did he attack Vienna where an Assembly of 
revolutionists was sitting. Everything depended on the 
Hungarians. In the first place the Hungarians had their 
Constitution, but the Diet was controlled by the nobles, 
and noble land was free from taxation; the patriot 
Kossuth had been working to make the Hungarian 
government national, to secure rights and equal laws for 
towns and peasants, and he was not satisfied with mere 
material prosperity under noble monopoly 1 . Secondly, 

1 To Sz^chenyi, a noble, was due the improvement of Hungary before 
1848, e.g. the construction of the Buda-Pesth bridge and the blowing up 
of the Iron Gates in the Danube. " He was no revolutionist, nor was he 
an enemy to Austria." Fyffe, chap. xvm. 



1848 THE TROUBLES OF AUSTRIA 221 

in Hungary itself and in the neighbouring countries, 
Bohemia,, Austrian Poland, Transylvania, Croatia, was 
and is a large non-Hungarian population, mostly Slavonic, 
which resented Magyar or native Hungarian supremacy. 
The result was that while the Hungarians were excited by 
these two questions they missed their chance of actually 
waging war on Austria, and Prague was captured and 
Charles Albert was beaten in Italy, so that the Emperor 
had a breathing space. Jellacic, a native of Croatia, was 
appointed to be "Ban" of Croatia, and the Hungarian 
government objected; the Emperor promised to suspend 
him, but later broke his word. Therefore Austria had 
now a valuable ally in Jellacic as leader of the Slavs of 
Croatia and elsewhere, and this implied the loyalty of the 
Croatian regiments, to which we must add the constant 
loyalty of the Tyrolese. When in October Windischgratz 
advanced on Vienna to crush the revolution and the 
Hungarian army came to help the city, Jellacic came to 
take the Hungarians in the rear; they were beaten, 
Vienna fell, and a reign of revenge began. In December 
the Emperor was forced to abdicate, and was succeeded 
by his nephew Francis Joseph aged eighteen years 1 . 

The year 1849 saw Austria and Hungary openly at 
war. Still compelled to keep a force in Italy the Austrians 
were unable to prevail unaided. Finally the Tsar inter- 
fered, and between their Austrian and Russian enemies 
the resistance of the Hungarians collapsed. Tales of 
heartless cruelty were spread throughout Europe, and 
General Haynau gained a name for peculiar ferocity. 

In 1849 a Roman Republic was set up, and Pius IX 
fled; the Grand Duke fled from Tuscany; Charles Albert 
took up arms again. Radetsky promptly crushed Charles 
Albert at Novara, between Milan and Turin, in March, 

1 He is still alive in 1914, and therefore his is the "record " reign of 
our days, having lasted 65 years. Victoria reigned nearly 64 years, 
Louis XIV 72 years. 



222 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

and then proceeded to restore the Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
Once more Piedmont was at his mercy, and once more was 
spared, partly no doubt because, as in 1848, he had too 
much to do and the throne of Francis Joseph was by no 
means secure, partly because there was ever a fear that 
France would interfere to help the House of Savoy. 
Charles Albert abdicated, and left his son Victor Emanuel 
to be the future unifier of Italy. 

But it was to Rome and her heroic Republic that all 
eyes were turned. The movement seemed to be mad. No 
outside help could be expected except possibly from 
France, for, though British sympathies were with Italy, 
the British government was under the spell of the idea 
of insularity or non-interference. Suddenly the new 
French Republic's President decided to fight in Italy, 
not for Italian liberty as his uncle would at least have 
made pretence to do, but against. Louis Napoleon was 
afraid of the socialists and red republicans at home, 
anxious to prove to the world that a Napoleon could be 
a good Catholic, ready to sacrifice the chance of a life- 
time in order to conciliate the moderates of France. He 
sent an army, much too small, to take Rome. Mazzini 
was there, and patriot volunteers from the conquered 
parts of Italy who had nothing left to hope for or to 
fear, and above all Garibaldi, who had spent his best 
years in exile in South America and had returned a little 
earlier to raise a corps of volunteers against Radetsky. 
The French advanced against the higher ground of Rome 
on the right bank of the Tiber, where the medieval wall 
was strong; if once the position was carried, low-lying 
Rome on the left bank was doomed. But they were few, 
and Garibaldi's desperate men repulsed them. They fell 
back, and terms of peace were discussed by de Lesseps, 
the canal-maker of the future, while reinforcements were 
arriving. Then came the second attack, which lasted just 
a month. Heroism was unavailing, the French broke in, 



i8 4 9 GARIBALDI AT ROME 223 

and Garibaldi fled to the mountains and was hunted till 
he managed to escape. Shortly afterwards Venice fell to 
the Austrians after a siege of over a year. Italy was 
prostrate; Pius IX, cured of all desire to be a reformer, 
was supreme at Rome, Ferdinand in Naples and Sicily, 
the Austrians in the north. But the mad resistance of 
a few thousands behind the old wall of Rome was no 
more useless than Charles Albert's campaigns had been. 
Italians had a brave attempt to which to look back. The 
ideal of devotion to a losing cause often brings about 
final success. 

Germany had her problems in 1848 — 49, but no violent 
war resulted. The King of Prussia was forced at first to 
grant a Constitution, and an Assembly met at Berlin. 
A Federal Diet met at Frankfort. Neither body was 
successful. The King at the end of 1848 suppressed the 
Berlin Assembly by military force, and then proceeded 
to grant a Constitution on his own plan, thus keeping up 
the Prussian ideal that the monarchy should do every- 
thing for the people and the people nothing for themselves. 
The Frankfort Diet could come to no decision; it was a 
grand thing to have a United Grermany ; but firstly was 
Austria to be included, and secondly could the Emperor 
of Austria, despotic ruler as he claimed to be over his 
Empire, submit to be merely a member controlled by the 
Diet ? In 1849 the sovereignty of United Germany was 
offered by the Diet to the King of Prussia. He refused 
it. As in Berlin, so in Frankfort, he would not be an 
elected sovereign, and if Prussia would ever attain the 
headship she must win it as her right by the superior 
might of her reigning dynasty. The Hohenzollerns have 
ever believed in their divine right. Thus the Frankfort 
movement failed, for a body of members who only talk, 
who are disunited in their aims, and who cannot provide 
the force to secure obedience to their decisions, is out of 
place. There is also this to be said; the reigning King 



224 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

of Prussia, Frederick William IV, had not the force of 
character which we usually associate with the Hohen- 
zollerns. Under him for the next ten years Prussia was 
quiet. In 1858 his brother William became Regent, in 
1861 King, in 1871 German Emperor. The realisation of 
German Unity had to wait for the right man, but in the 
meanwhile the idea was in men's minds. 

While Germany and Italy were quiet and subdued, 
waiting for William and Victor Emanuel, France was the 
moving force in European politics. Louis Napoleon had 
appealed to the moderates in crushing the Roman Re- 
public and restoring Pius IX. His term of office as 
President would expire in 1851, and though he had sworn 
to uphold the French Republic he thought that he was 
justified in violating its constitution ; he was the only 
possible centre of law and order and a settled government; 
republicanism, as the experiences of 1792 — 99 showed, 
seemed to imply constant changes; he was the heir of 
a great name, but he would base his authority ultimately 
on the support of the people. How far he was self- 
deceived in believing himself to be the man of destiny 
whose mission was to save France no one can determine. 
We know the events up to 1870 which have made his 
name hated and ridiculous, and the events since 1870 
which have shown that a Republic can last for over forty 
years and give peace and prosperity to France ; but in 
1851 insecurity and republicanism seemed to be the same 
thing. He ingratiated himself with the army, and planned 
a coup d'etat or military revolution. On the night of 
December 1, 1851, he arrested several liberal opponents, 
occupied the Parliament house, seized the printing press, 
and turned out a proclamation dissolving the Assembly 
and appealing to the people. Between December 2 and 
4 Paris was overawed, and much innocent blood was 
shed. In the course of the month he appealed to the 
people, instituting what was to be his favourite device to 



1 85 1-2 THE SECOND EMPIRE 225 

show that the nation approved, a plebiscite 1 ; 7,000,000 
votes were given in his support. He was Prince President 
for 10 years. But the next step was inevitable. A second 
plebiscite authorised him, again by 7,000,000 votes, to 
make himself the Emperor Napoleon III. In our eyes 
the title is ridiculous; Louis XYI died on the guillotine 
and his son in prison, so his brother in 1814 called himself 
Louis XVIII; it was rather a feeble imitation of what 
tlfe legitimate dynasty had done when Napoleon III 
insinuated that the great usurper's son had a right to be 
Napoleon II. To combine strict heredity with military 
seizure of a throne is contradictory. 

"The Empire is Peace" said Napoleon III, and he 
plunged into three great wars in Europe, and a lesser 
one in Mexico. But at first people believed in his star; 
even shortly before 1870 English public opinion, as seen 
in a cartoon in Punch, thought that his last successful 
plebiscite made the throne safe for Napoleon IY. He 
had his chance to show that the coup d'etat was merely 
a cruel necessity so that France could have a strong 
government. But he had no directing power, no gift of 
organisation, nothing but a name. He could use phrases 
but not act up to them. Each of his successful wars he 
left unfinished. Designing men could easily influence 
him, and his Spanish wife Eugenie also had a bad 
influence; it is always said that the extreme Catholics 
dictated to him through her. Corruption was supreme 
in the army and the civil service. Thus he came to 
be regarded as an untrustworthy ally by England, 
Italy, Austria, and Bavaria in turn, ready to desert a 
cause when difficulties arose. He was an ordinary man 
pushed into a high position which he had not the power 
to fill worthily, yet not the unmanly traitor that the 
shrieks of 1870 proclaimed him to be. 

1 A special vote on one point alone, corresponding to the referendum 
of which much is heard now. 

M. E. H. 15 



226 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

As if he were determined to be the worthy nephew 
of his uncle, he looked for a chance of distinction and 
seemed to Avaver between a wish to avenge Waterloo 
and a wish to avenge Moscow. With him la revanche 
took the place of les idees revolutionnaires under which 
his uncle gained his first laurels in 1796. Tsar Nicholas 
helped him to make his choice. 

It was quite easy for any Tsar to meditate a new 
attack upon Turkey by straining the terms of the treaties 
of Kainardji and Adrianople 1 . He had only to claim 
a sort of general championship of all the Christian 
subjects of the Sultan, and thus would have an excuse 
to satisfy the traditional policy of Russia, to expand 
towards the sea. The particular occasion was a dispute 
as to the rights of the Greek or the Roman Catholic 
monks at Jerusalem to have the keys of the Holy Places ; 
Nicholas supported the first ; Napoleon, already offended 
because Nicholas did not acknowledge him as a "brother" 
sovereign, saw his chance in supporting the second. The 
Sultan gave way to France. Then Nicholas meditated 
an attack upon Turkey, " the sick man " of Europe, and 
suggested to Lord Aberdeen, our prime minister, that 
Russia and Great Britain should unite to partition the 
country. He liked our country and people ; he re- 
membered how his brother Alexander, our warmest ally 
against the great Napoleon, had been welcomed in London 
in 1814. So he thought it natural that he should make 
the other Balkan provinces as independent as Rumania 
was already, even occupy Constantinople for a time, and 
give the British a free hand as regards Egypt and Crete. 
What he failed to understand was that the British were 
no longer so well disposed towards Russia as in 1814, 
regarded him as a cruel despot, and remembered the Holy 
Alliance and the merciless suppression of the Poles and 
the Hungarians. Wellington's policy of keeping the 
1 See pages 139 and 213. 



1 853 THE EASTERN QUESTION 227 

Russians away from the eastern Mediterranean was now 
supported by two energetic men, Palmerston who was most 
influential in Aberdeen's ministry 1 , and Lord Stratford 
de Redcliffe 2 our ambassador to Turkey. The cry was to 
uphold the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and this just 
suited Napoleon III. Thus, in place of joining an old 
ally against an old enemy, the British government drifted 
into alliance with Napoleon, who on his side was ready to 
avenge Moscow rather than Waterloo. It was at least to 
the good that Britain and France could be allies. Other- 
wise our statesmen were committed to an impossible task, 
namely to bolster up an oriental government, which never 
could, and never wished to, reform itself. Of course it 
is difficult to criticise our statesmen of 1853 — 54 without 
thought of 1876 — 78 or 1912 — 18, and we must remember 
that Gladstone in 1876, even in his fiercest speech against 
the Turks, said definitely that he believed the Crimean 
War to have been really necessary, and that he accepted 
fully his responsibility for his share in it. Having so 
many Mohammedan subjects in India our statesmen could 
not refuse to help the Turks simply as being Moham- 
medans. Thus to-day it is not for their religion, but for 
their failure to reform after all the help given to them by 
the western nations, that they have lost the sympathy and 
support of the West. Lastly, British enthusiasm for war 
is curiously spasmodic. In 1853 — 54 public feeling seemed 
to be set on war as if we had had enough of peace since 
Waterloo, as if we were ashamed of being a nation of 
shop-keepers devoted only to free trade and manufacture, 
and required a little excitement and glory. 

Thus, when in 1853 Nicholas demanded not only the 
Holy Places for the Greek clergy, but also his right to 
protect all the Christians of Turkey, the Sultan, relying 

1 Palmerston, who had gained a reputation for being too headstrong 
as Foreign Secretary, was Home Secretary in 1854. 

2 Sir Stratford Canning, cousin of the late premier George Canning. 

15—2 



228 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

on Lord Stratford, refused. Russian armies appeared on 
the Danube. British and French fleets appeared off the 
Dardanelles, and then passed through the straits; but 
they were not promptly sent forwards, and the Russians 
destroyed the Turkish squadron at Sinope, a port on the 
south shore of the Black Sea. War was inevitable, and 
the general impression left on our minds is that none of 
the powers engaged expected war, or thought that the 
others meant war, and therefore drifted into war. In 
1854 the Russians besieged Silistria on the Bulgarian 
bank of the Danube, and the French and British armies 
arrived at Varna on the Bulgarian coast. Now the 
Emperor of Austria played his part ; if the Tsar could 
have calculated on the help of any monarch at this date, 
surely the Emperor of Austria was that monarch, for the 
Russians had helped him to crush Hungary. But he 
demanded the evacuation of Rumania, and Nicholas had 
to submit. Henceforward Austria has always been 
Russia's opponent in Balkan problems. 

The Allied armies still lay at Varna, and what more 
could they do ? To call them home, now that the Russians 
had left Rumania, seemed to be a feeble ending after 
much excitement, and Nicholas might begin the war 
again at any moment. So the demand was made that he 
should give up his right to protect the Christians. He 
refused. Thereupon both armies were ordered to the 
Crimea to destroy Sebastopol, the one great arsenal and 
place-of-arms on the Black Sea. It was now late in the 
year, cholera was raging at Varna and would accompany 
the troops, the climate of the Crimea was unknown, stores 
for a long siege were not ready. Thus it is difficult to 
acquit the governments of a blind eagerness to prolong 
the war to satisfy the excitement at home, France being 
critical about the new Napoleon, who had yet to prove 
himself a great ruler, Britain bent on proving herself not 
wholly given to trade and manufacture. The armies 



i8 5 4 THE ALLIES IN THE CRIMEA 229 

landed to face the unknown, each about 30,000 strong. 
Marshal St Arnaud commanded the French, but he was 
at death's door; Lord Raglan, aged 66, who had seen no 
service since Waterloo, commanded the British; our allies 
had mostly had much experience in Algeria, but only 
a few of our officers and men had been in India and all 
our traditions were of the Peninsular War forty years ago. 
One has to emphasise this point, for the military adminis- 
tration was rusty, and the economy of a nation devoted 
to trade as a sacred duty until the blaze of excitement 
came had prevented efficiency. It must be noticed here 
that this is the first war when all the infantry had muzzle- 
loading rifles ; in our ranks it was quite a new weapon, 
except for a few special regiments, for Wellington had 
resolutely refused to discard the old fire-lock, and he had 
only recently died. 

Advancing southwards along the coast the Allies found 
the Russians drawn up on the far bank above the river 
Alma. The British, September 20, made a straight frontal 
attack on the left; the French on the right by the sea had 
a steeper bank to climb, and were just threatening to 
outflank the Russians when they retreated. But the 
beaten enemy refused to let themselves be locked up in 
Sebastopol and retired inland, leaving in the place, under 
the command of Todleben, a garrison and the sailors of 
the fleet and a small army of trained workmen. Ships 
were sunk to block the mouth of the harbour, and 
Todleben worked hard to throw up fortifications. He 
said himself that the Allies could have rushed the 
northern defences at once. But they swept round, and 
occupied an upland in front of the south side of the 
harbour, the British on the right with their base at 
Balaclava, a small and distant harbour, the French on 
the left resting on Kamiesch Bay close to them. While 
they waited for their siege guns, Todleben dug and built. 
Meanwhile St Arnaud died, and Canrobert took his place. 



230 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

Siege in the ordinary sense of the term there was 
none. The Russians always held the north side of the 
harbour, and there was free access across by a bridge; 
reinforcements and supplies could enter Sebastopol during 
all the eleven months. The Allies, having received their 
guns, simply bombarded and prepared to assault. As 
fast as they destroyed the works by day Todleben re- 
built by night, and the wooden warships, trying to force 
the harbour mouth, were powerless against the land forts 
above it. Then on October 25 the outside Russian army 
crossed the river Tchernaya and tried to capture Balaclava, 
that is to say tried to cut off the British from their base ; 
they were repulsed, but held a strong position on our 
rear. On November 5 an attack from Sebastopol and the 
outside army fell on the British extreme right on the 
upland at Inkerman, and was repulsed with greater 
difficulty. Before the bombardment could be renewed 
came a storm of rain, which converted the upland into 
a sea of mud. Siege works were out of the question 
when stores and food could hardly be moved. The 
horrors of the winter, semi-starvation, disease, lack of 
clothing and drugs, loss of stores in bad weather at sea, 
frost and snow in the trenches varied by mud after a 
thaw, utter inability to help the sick and wounded, con- 
gestion at Balaclava when the stores did arrive but could 
not be distributed, the awful story is only too well known. 
Miss Nightingale arrived in November at the hospital at 
Scutari, on the Asiatic shore opposite to Constantinople, 
but it was some time before her influence was felt. In 
January 1855, Lord Aberdeen resigned, and Palmerston 
formed a new and more energetic ministry. In March 
died Tsar Nicholas I, and Alexander II succeeded. 

Things were very much better for the Allies in the 
spring. The French, who had suffered less, were strongly 
reinforced till they had in May about 100,000 effectives ; 
the British after all their losses, having sunk as low as 



i8 5 3-4 BEFORE SEBASTOPOL 231 

12,000, numbered 30,000; about 40,000 Turks arrived 
whose services were considered to be worthless, and 
15,000 " Sardinians," for Victor Emanuel, who had no 
quarrel with Russia, wanted to put both France and 
England under an obligation to the House of Savoy. 
Consequently there were enough French and Italians to 
occupy the ground between Balaclava and the Tchernaya, 
and the Russians retired beyond the river. On the upland 
the British were too few to carry on the whole of the 
right attack, where Todleben had erected several new 
forts, notably the Malakoff ; so the French took over the 
extreme right as well as the left, while our men had only 
the right centre. Now Napoleon interfered much with 
the generals, this being the first war when field armies 
were tied to headquarters at home by the telegraph, and 
his idea was to give up the siege and attack the Russian 
outside army. Lord Raglan was clearly right in insisting 
that the Allies were committed to the siege, and that the 
Malakoff was the key of the defence. Canrobert, dis- 
tracted between them, asked to be superseded, and 
General Pelissier came to take command, a man of energy 
and fire, able to carry out his own ideas in spite of 
Napoleon. So the siege was pressed, but expeditions 
were also sent to the isthmus to cut off the ever inflowing 
stream of Russian reinforcements and supplies. The 
bombardment was far more severe than before and the 
siege guns heavier. Some of Todleben's forts were 
carried by the French. But a great combined attack on 
Waterloo day failed, and then Raglan died worn out 1 . 
In August the Russian army crossed the Tchernaya to 
relieve the tension of the siege, but the French and 
Italians easily repulsed them with great loss. After 
a fiercer bombardment, Todleben being wounded, the 

1 He had shown little skill or alertness in battle, but much quiet 
persistence in the winter months of the siege, and much tact towards 
the French. 



232 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

final assault was made on September 8. The mighty 
Malakoff, occupying entirely an isolated hill, seemed to 
be impregnable, but the French had sapped to within 
a dozen yards, and its weakness was that it was enclosed 
all round, so that, when they rushed it under General 
MacMahon, they were covered against fire from the rear. 
The British carried the central fort, the Redan, but it was 
open to the rear and the Russian fire drove them out 
again. General Simpson, Raglan's successor, has always 
been unfavourably criticised, and the honour of the day 
belonged to Pelissier. On the other hand the very 
powerful British artillery had greatly contributed by its 
cross fire to the fall of the Malakoff. 

Next day it was found that Sebastopol had been 
deserted in the night. The Allies spent another winter 
in the Crimea and there was no repetition of horrors. 
The British were over 50,000 strong and in good con- 
dition, and a German legion of 10,000 was in our pay, 
the last of those mercenary corps so common in the 
18th century. But Napoleon had the deciding word, as 
he had constantly kept up his army to some 120,000 men 
and they had won Sebastopol. He seemed to think that 
enough had been done for glory. The Russian army still 
held the Crimea and was not attacked, though Russia was 
for the time exhausted and nearly bankrupt. Peace was 
made with Alexander II by the Treaty of Paris in March 
1856; the navigation of the Black Sea and the Danube 
was to be free, and no Russian warships might be kept 
and no arsenals rebuilt on the coast. 

Sea Power, and Sea Power only, had brought about 
this result. The Allies had had free approach to the 
Crimea, and, except during the first winter, had not 
suffered more severely than any nation in war must 
suffer. But the Russians had not only lost thousands of 
men under the terrific bombardment and in battle where 
they had fought in dense unwieldy masses, but also had 



1849-59 ASPIRATIONS OF ITALY 233 

strained every nerve to bring up reserves from the in- 
terior, all on foot, and vast numbers died on the march. 
Russia lost more than Sebastopol and all these lives ; she 
was thrown back and did not recover from exhaustion 
for many years. Yet whether the Allies gained much 
thereby may be reasonably doubted. 

The fact that Victor Emanuel sent troops to the 
Crimea was very significant. A remarkable man had 
come to the front in Piedmont, namely Count Cavour, 
and he had a definite plan before him. The Kingdom of 
Sardinia alone of the Italian states was free, and alone 
gave promise for the future; it had done something in 
1848 and 1849, and since then was being nursed to pros- 
perity, enjoying a Parliament at Turin and a free press, 
laying down railways, welcoming Italian exiles from 
Austrian and Papal territory, ; diminishing the excessive 
power of the Church within its own borders. Cavour' s 
idea was that an enlightened Sardinia would force Europe 
to recognise that hers was the only power fit to make 
Italian Unity a reality; it was only possible under a 
monarchy which had won its spurs and had a past history 
of freedom; Mazzini's ideal of republicanism was out of 
place. But Sardinia unaided could not lead a national war 
against Austria. With the wisdom bought by experience 
Cavour would have no share in an heroic uprising which 
could not but be crushed. An organised power must be 
brought against the organised armies of Austria, and, if 
need were, must be bought by some sacrifice. Napoleon III 
was approached, and took the bait. In 1858 at Plombieres 
an arrangement was made for a Franco-Italian alliance. 
The Emperor was dazzled by the chance of winning a 
name in a campaign on the Po in imitation of his uncle, 
yet he was not quite so soft as to do it for nothing. 
Cavour and Victor Emanuel wanted him, and made the 
sacrifice, namely the cession to France of Savoy and 
Nice. England could give nothing but sympathy and 



234 WATEKLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

moral support; it is easy to sneer, for moral support is 
cheap, yet there is a real encouragement when one free 
nation wishes well to another. Palmerston probably in 
any case would not have fought for Italy, but in 1859 he 
could not because of the recent Indian Mutiny ; also for 
a short time he was out of office. 

In 1859 war was declared, and the Austrians missed 
their chance of overrunning Piedmont before the French 
arrived. At Magenta on the way to Milan Marshal 
MacMahon 1 , who as general had stormed the Malakoff, 
drove the Austrians back, June 4. They abandoned 
Milan and all Lombardy, and fell back to the Mincio and 
the famous defences of the Quadrilateral. A second 
battle was fought on a very wide front at Solferino, 
June 24; it was not scientific fighting, but the French 
and Italians, under the eyes of Napoleon and Victor 
Emanuel, were victorious. There was then a halt. 
Suddenly Napoleon and Francis Joseph had an interview 
at Villa Franca and an armistice was made on July 11. 
Napoleon feared that Prussia might come to Austria's 
aid, the great fortresses of the Quadrilateral had always 
been difficult to win, the French army, from what we 
know of 1870, was probably not in condition for a further 
big effort ; at any rate the nephew had not the uncle's 
determination. The chief clause of the treaty was that 
Lombardy was to be given to Victor Emanuel. 

But in the meanwhile various states, freed from the 
Austrian troops who had marched to the war, declared 
for Victor Emanuel. Luckily no misplaced republicanism 
weakened the movement. The union of Parma, Modena, 
Tuscany and the northern Papal Legations, to Sardinia 
was not in the Villa Franca programme. But neither 
France nor Austria dared let the other interfere, and 
Austria was always weakened by the disaffection of 
Hungary. A plebiscite was taken in central Italy, Victor 
1 He was created Duke of Magenta. For map see page 165. 



1859-60 THE KINGDOM OF ITALY 235 

Emanuel accepted the verdict, and in 1860 met in Turin 
a Parliament representing Sardinia and Lombardy and 
Tuscany, and the other states. Cavour had resigned office 
for a time when disgust against him and his French ally 
had been strong after Villa Franca. But he returned to 
power, and he and Victor Emanuel had to pay the stipu- 
lated price. A plebiscite was taken in Savoy and Nice, 
and it was given out that a majority wished to be annexed 
to France. Napoleon having fought for his idea in 1859, 
glory and the honour of chivalrously helping Italy, had 
now his practical reward. The country is to-day genuinely 
French in sentiment. Yet the House of Savoy has lost 
its home, though the white cross of Savoy is still displayed 
in the red, white, and green national flag of Italy. Nice 
is to-day a big modern French town, a centre of local 
government and of pleasure, and little remains of the old 
Nice which was Garibaldi's birthplace. 

Garibaldi served in 1859 on the flank of the main 
army in command of guerilla bands. He then wished to 
make a dash on Rome and was prevented. In 1860 he 
sailed from Genoa in two ships with his 1000 red-shirted 
volunteers, landed on the south coast of Sicily, marched 
across to Palermo and took it ; then crossed to Italy and 
raised the Kingdom of Naples. Revolt had begun before 
he arrived in Sicily, but his energy made it successful. 
Victor Emanuel had no hesitation in making Sicily his 
own. He sent his regular troops against the Papal States, 
then against Naples; he wanted to secure Garibaldi's 
conquests to himself as national king, and at the same 
time to prevent mere revolution and possible anarchy. 
He had to stop Garibaldi from making a dash upon 
Rome, for Napoleon ever posed as the champion of the 
Church and garrisoned Rome. Finally Garibaldi retired 
into private life, the Bourbon dynasty was for ever ex- 
pelled from Naples, and whereas in 1860 the Parliament 
of Turin represented eleven millions of Italians, in 1861 



236 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

it represented twenty-three millions by the addition of 
Sicily and Naples and the eastern Papal Marches. The 
Patrimony of St Peter alone remained to the Pope, and 
Venetia to Austria. 

In 1862 Graribaldi called for volunteers against Rome, 
and Victor Emanuel's troops had to fire on them and take 
him prisoner; even a hero must not be allowed to be 
a firebrand and provoke France. In 1864 Napoleon 
agreed to withdraw his garrison from Rome if Victor 
Emanuel would defend the Pope from invasion. Mean- 
while the Italian Parliament met at Florence as more 
central than Turin. But all Italians lived in hope of 
some day making Rome the capital. Italy was yet " un- 
redeemed." 

Russia, meanwhile, was occupied by the agrarian pro- 
blem. In 1861 Alexander II liberated the serfs by the 
Edict of Emancipation. In Poland he tried to do his best 
to govern by means of Polish officials, but the spirit of 
national independence was strong, and outrage led to 
measures of repression; then came revolt and more severity 
of repression. The insurgents were the nobles, the Roman 
Catholic priests, and the townsfolk. The peasants had 
little sympathy with nobles, and often enough in the 
wide districts of the old Poland of the 18th century 
were not Poles by blood. The revolt crushed in 1863, the 
Russian government supported peasant against noble by 
setting the former free at the expense of the latter. But 
at the same time the Polish language and national thought 
were opposed to Russian ideas, and were therefore trampled 
on, and the very class benefited by emancipation has 
become anti-Russian as much as the nobles themselves. 
Memories of Russian cruelty outweigh whatever benefits 
have been conferred. Napoleon III and Palmerston could 
not interfere as the friends of Poland, for France and 
Britain were estranged as the result of the Crimean War; 
the French loudly boasted of their superiority before the 



i86i- 7 o THE ADVANCE OF PRUSSIA 237 

fortifications of Sebastopol, and even war against us was 
for a short time in Napoleon's mind. 

In this decade the fortunes of Grermany began to 
attract the interest of all Europe : even the excitement 
roused by events in Italy paled in comparison. The 
spring of all action was Prussia. William I was King in 
1861, and called upon the services of the then unknown 
Bismarck. The main idea of their policy was that the 
Crown should dominate Prussia, and Prussia dominate 
Grermany; the divine right of the Hohenzollerns should 
be supported by an efficient reorganised army; for the 
sake of the greater good, German Unity under the lead 
of Prussia, a steady policy of " blood and iron " should be 
pursued, and the goal must be reached whoever might 
suffer. The Federal idea of 1814, and again of 1848, was 
out of place, and a Diet representing great and small 
sovereign states was a hindrance to unity. The national 
sentiment of Hanover or Bavaria tended to disunion. The 
Austrian Empire was largely non-German, and an Emperor 
could not be a mere second to a King. Therefore Prussia 
must dominate or conquer Austria and Hanover and 
Bavaria. Already Prussia had absorbed Pomerania and 
some of Poland, much of central Grermany and Rhine- 
land; her policy since the days of Frederick the Great 
had been to absorb. Therefore she had a large population. 
The Customs-Union, initiated by Prussia, had shown that 
prosperity follows on unity. The new railways had their 
influence. William and Bismarck had now to prove that 
Prussia was strong enough to beat down opposition, and 
direct the aspirations for unity into channels of their own 
choosing. The minister Yon Roon and the strategist 
Yon Moltke gave them their instrument, the Prussian 
army. 

The question of Schleswig and Holstein had been of 
importance in 1848 — 49. Here were two provinces under 
the King of Denmark, Schleswig partly German, Holstein 



238 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

purely German. The Frankfort Diet had tried to sever 
them from Denmark, but nothing had resulted, chiefly 
because the conflicting views of Prussia and Austria pre- 
vented action. Among outside powers Great Britain took 
the lead in supporting Denmark, and in 1863 Christian IX 
came to the throne and his daughter Alexandra married 
the Prince of Wales. At this moment — for Christian 
was only connected with the royal line through his 
mother and grandmother, and had to go back 250 years 
to establish a male connection — the Bund claimed rights 
over the duchies and occupied Holstein. But Bismarck 
was determined that Prussia should settle the question, 
not the Bund. In a clever way he obtained the alliance 
of Austria, and the joint armies invaded Schleswig beating 
down the Danish defence. Active help from Great Britain 
was expected. Palmerston and Lord John Russell promised 
" support " for Schleswig if Christian gave up Holstein ; 
but Palmerston was now old, and after wars in the Crimea 
and India and China was less energetic than before ; 
Queen Victoria was German in her sympathies; Napoleon 
was not anxious for war, and in any case the Franco- 
British entente of 1854 was no longer cordiale. So it was 
given out in Parliament that " support " meant " moral 
support," which was not of much value when Bismarck 
had made up his mind to carry the matter to a finish. 
Christian could not resist. By the Treaty of Gastein 
Austria took over Holstein, and Prussia Schleswig. The 
troops of the Bund had to retire, for they would have 
been useless against the armies of the two great states. 

We have to look across the Atlantic if we wish to 
understand the attitude of Napoleon in the sixties. If 
he was really ambitious to shine in war, he missed two 
chances, now in the Schleswig-Holstein affair, two years 
later in the Prussian- Austrian war, which his uncle would 
have turned to account. There was trouble in Mexico, 
for the Latin- American republics have had many civil 



i86 2 -3 THE FRENCH IN MEXICO 239 

wars since Canning acknowledged them, and the half- 
Spanish races are excitable and resentful of established 
government. The lives and property of Europeans were 
not safe. Napoleon sent over a French army in 1863, 
and then offered to set up an Austrian, the Archduke 
Maximilian, as Emperor of Mexico. But this was done 
at the very worst time. The great Civil War in the 
United States was just drawing to a close, and as the 
North was victorious after a bitter struggle there was 
a huge army, well led and trained, well equipped with all 
the resources of a wealthy country, ready to carry out 
the wishes of the government. The United States put 
into force the " Monroe Doctrine " of 1823 by which the 
interference of European powers in Latin America was 
forbidden. Napoleon had no choice but to recall his 
army, a terrible humiliation for one of his name. Maxi- 
milian, deserted by him, was killed by insurgent Mexicans. 
Both France and Great Britain were deeply moved by 
the American Civil War, but wisely did not interfere. 
It was caused by the question of negro slavery. The 
South or Confederate States, led by Virginia, were Demo- 
cratic and stood up for the rights of individual states to 
govern themselves and to keep their slaves if they wished; 
the North or Federal States were Republicans and en- 
forced by the sword the right of the United States as 
a whole to demand the emancipation of all negroes. At 
first in 1862 — 63 the Confederates beat back the Federals, 
yet never gained such a crushing victory as to compel 
peace. Gradually the Federals, having wealth and 
manufacturing power and, above all, naval power, hemmed 
in the South, and in the long run collapse came from 
sheer exhaustion in men and means. Now had France 
and Great Britain thrown all the might of their naval 
strength into the struggle — for quite a majority in each 
country sympathised with the South in the desire to be 
free^ including freedom to have slaves— their interference 



240 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

might have been successful. They would have given to 
the South precisely what was lacking, supplies, manu- 
factured goods, everything that naval power can give. 
But it would have been done at an awful cost, the undying 
enmity of the Northern States, the hatred which the 
mere thought of helping slavery would have caused, and 
possibly years of war. Palmerstoir's policy of non-inter- 
vention strikes us to-day as having been wise. He was 
old and less warlike, as we saw when we found him 
applying non-intervention to the Schleswig-Holstein affair; 
Napoleon could not be trusted, for in every war he was 
at first active and ended by being slack. So the United 
States ended their war by themselves after woe unutter- 
able had fallen on the South, and then they ordered the 
French to quit Mexico. 

Returning to Europe we see at once that an Austrian 
occupation of Holstein was impossible. It was miles 
from the Austrian frontier, and had no interest for the 
Hungarians and other non- Germans of the Empire. 
Bismarck had lured Austria into war with Denmark 
so as to checkmate the Bund. It was easy to quarrel 
in 1866 with Austria so as to settle which power was the 
stronger, to humiliate Austria, and then to destroy the 
Bund. The Prussian army was quite ready. The minor 
German states wished well to Austria, but Bavaria was 
not ready to fight, Saxony and Hanover armed but were 
not very strong. Napoleon was in trouble about his 
Mexican failure, and Bismarck tricked him into being 
neutral and thus losing his great chance; in 1805 
Napoleon I had dangled Hanover as a bait before the 
eyes of King Frederick William III, so that no Prussians 
fought at Austerlitz; Bismarck now let Napoleon III 
think he would be allowed part of the west bank of the 
Rhine. Thus Austria had the active help of only Saxony 
and Hanover. Prussia secured Italy as an ally with the 
promise of the annexation of Yenetia, and this meant that 



1 866 THE SEVEN WEEKS 5 WAR 241 

a large proportion of Austrian troops were required in 
the south. 

The Prussians advanced in the end of June. A western 
force was sent against the Hanoverians. The main array 
under Frederick Charles, the " Red Prince/ 5 invaded 
Saxony and moved up the Elbe, and the Saxons fell back 
to join the Austrians. A third army was in Silesia and 
prepared to cross the mountains under the Crown Prince. 
The campaign is therefore famous for the daring strategy 
of Von Moltke ; he was launching two armies from two 
widely separated bases in Saxony and in Silesia to com- 
bine in the enemy's country, Bohemia, a most delicate 
undertaking even though each was aware of the other's 
movements by telegraph. " March separately, concentrate 
on the battlefield" is a Napoleonic maxim, and a crushing 
victory will attend success; the risk is great but justi- 
fiable. On the other hand an active and ready enemy 
will get between the two and beat them separately, even 
as Napoleon himself did in 1796. On this occasion Benedek, 
who commanded the Austrians and Saxons, meant to 
throw his whole force on the Red Prince, but he was too 
slow and allowed the Prussians to advance too far. 
Meanwhile the Crown Prince crossed the mountains 
without loss, just where he should have been met and 
overpowered. Finally Benedek made his stand on the 
heights around the village of Sadowa where the high 
road runs to the upper Elbe, and in his rear was the river 
where the road crosses it at Koniggratz ; hence the battle 
is known by either name. Already he was despondent 
because in the minor actions of the previous week the 
Prussian breech-loader, the needle-gun, was clearly 
superior to his own muzzle-loader, the men firing six 
shots to the minute and being able to load and fire while 
lying on the ground. On July 3 the Austrians held their 
own well at Sadowa against Frederick Charles who 
attacked them in front, but by midday the Crown Prince 

M. E. H. 16 



242 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

made himself felt on their right flank ; then, driven in on 
both sides and forced on to the river, they collapsed 
as badly as the French at Waterloo. The strategy had 
succeeded, and the Prussians had met on the actual field 
of battle. 

The Hanoverians on June 27 held their own well 
against the western Prussian force at Langensalza, in the 
neighbourhood of Jena; but next day they surrendered 
to superior forces. The Italians fought on June 24 at 
Custozza, the place so fatal to them in 1848, and were 
again defeated. Their only gratification was that they 
had detained Austrians who were badly wanted to stem 
the tide of defeat in Bohemia, Their fleet also was 
beaten by the Austrians off Lissa. Bismarck, however, 
made good his promise, and when peace was made Venetia 
was ceded to Victor Emanuel. 

The arrangements in Germany after this Seven Weeks' 
War were highly important. Prussia took and incorporated 
not only all Schleswig and Holstein, but also Hanover, 
Nassau, Hesse Cassel, and the great free city of Frankfort, 
thus securing a solid portion of central Germany to connect 
her with her older conquests in Rhineland. The Bund 
was finally dissolved. A new North German Confedera- 
tion was created, Prussia at its head, Austria excluded. 
The kingdoms of Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg were 
left untouched; also the Grand Duchies of Baden and 
Hesse Darmstadt. Napoleon hoped that these would 
form a South German Confederation looking to France 
for protection. But Bismarck had only to make known 
that Napoleon desired to annex German territory up to 
the Rhine 1 , and at once the South Germans were off ended 
and each state made secret alliance with Prussia. The 
details of Napoleon's- intrigues are difficult to follow, but 
at least it remains that he did nothing to help Denmark 

1 The bit of the old lower Palatinate north of Baden belonged to 
Bavaria. 



1866 THE RESULTS OF SADOWA 243 

in 1863 — 64, and nothing to help Austria and the South 
Germans in 1866, and had no one to help him in 1870. 

The Austrian Empire also was influenced by the result 
of Sadowa-Koniggratz. Ever since 1849 the Hungarians 
had objected to the single government which sat at 
Vienna, and in connection with the Italian troubles in 
1859 — 60 it had been the fear of a new Hungarian rising 
that had tied the Emperor's hands when Victor Emanuel 
got more than the treaty of Villa Franca allowed him. 
On the eve of the Seven Weeks' War matters were being 
discussed by Austria and Hungary. The war hastened 
a decision, for defeated Austria had to buy Hungary's 
loyalty at almost any price. So was formed The Dual 
Monarchy: two Crowns, two Parliaments, two Ministries, 
two official Languages ; but matters of common interest, 
foreign affairs, war, and finance, were to be treated in 
common. In 1867 Francis Joseph was crowned as King 
of Hungary. It is generally acknowledged that the 
system has worked tolerably well, and anything is better 
than repression resulting in disloyalty. But Hungary 
still has her problem. The Slavonic peoples of Croatia 
and the Rumanians of Transylvania object to the domina- 
tion of Hungarian officials and language, and even in 
Hungary proper a large proportion of the inhabitants are 
non-Hungarian . 

Yet four more years were to pass after Sadowa before 
the great catastrophe. We have already seen the character 
of Napoleon III, well meaning but unable to organise or 
to control those whose selfishness thwarted him, keen to 
begin a war worthy of his name but ready to stop when 
a crisis arrived. He claimed that his was a "liberal 
empire" based on popular votes or plebiscites. But he 
fell between two stools ; he neither allowed speech to be 
entirely free, nor unsparingly suppressed speech that was 
too free, and both in Parliament and in the Press anti- 
imperial feeling was kept alive by prosecutions, yet was 

16—2 



244 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

punished by quite trivial sentences and always could 
express itself. Meanwhile France was growing in pros- 
perity. Paris was largely rebuilt with broad boulevards 
and streets, doubtless with the hope that, as they could 
be easily swept by artillery, the days of barricades were 
over. Outside France, to balance the fatal interference 
in Mexico, the construction of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand 
de Lesseps with French capital was a splendid undertaking, 
and bid fair to give that ascendancy in the near East 
which France ever coveted ; Englishmen disliked it, and 
preferred that the bulk of Asiatic trade should come 
round the Cape and by the Atlantic to London, but no 
statesman dared to oppose openly the scheme. Napoleon 
and Eugenie opened the canal with great ceremony in 
1869. Nearer home he never wavered on one point, his 
support of the Pope ; the very foundation of his policy was 
to conciliate the anti-revolutionary, therefore the Roman 
Catholic, majority of Frenchmen. Once he withdrew his 
garrison from Rome, trusting that Victor Emanuel would 
keep Garibaldi in check. But in 1867 Garibaldi, the 
irrepressible, made yet another effort. French troops 
were speedily sent over and routed him at Mentana ; and 
then they garrisoned Rome once more. 

The occasion of the Franco-German War was trivial. 
Spain had had much civil war during fifty years, a dreary 
and uninteresting period. In 1868 Queen Isabella was 
deposed, in 1870 the crown was offered to a Hohenzollern 
who was a distant cousin of King William of Prussia. 
Napoleon interfered, and the Hohenzollern withdrew. 
But that was not enough. As though he were seeking 
for war on any pretext to make atonement for his back- 
wardness in 1866, Napoleon demanded that William 
should not, support the cousin if he were put forward 
again. An account of the French ambassador's treatment 
by William was sent to the papers, and the spark was set 
to the gunpowder of national jealousy. Napoleon declared 



i8 7 o THE CASUS BELLI 245 

war, being falsely assured by his ministers that his army 
was ready, and Frenchmen shouted "A Berlin ! " Bismarck, 
Yon Moltke, and Yon Roon had everything ready, and 
wanting war were only too glad to let France appear to 
be the aggressor and begin the war. 

Napoleon was not only deceived as to the readiness of 
the French. He had no efficient reserves; favouritism 
had ruined the officers, and permission to pay for sub- 
stitutes had lessened the numbers in the ranks ; even his 
fortresses were but imperfectly equipped. But also he 
miscalculated his chances as to having allies. Austria 
and Italy had no reason to trust him, and in any case an 
alliance could not be made good in a hurry; moreover 
a hint from Russia kept Austria quiet. The South 
Germans had been estranged by his ambition to extend 
to the Rhine, and, even had they been willing to join with 
Austria as his allies to avenge 1866, they would have 
expected him at once to advance into South Grermany, 
just the very thing he was not ready to do. Yet Europe 
was certainly surprised to see them arm and soon after- 
wards fight well and enthusiastically against France. 
The old idea of Louis XIY and Napoleon I that Grermany 
should be kept disunited through the alliance of France 
with the second-class states against the stronger dis- 
appeared for ever. Bavaria in 1870 sent two army 
corps, Saxony one, Wurtemberg and Baden and Hesse 
Darmstadt nearly one, to fight side by side with the 
twelve corps of Prussia and the North Grerman Con- 
federation. France had but one advantage; the chassepot 
was a better breech-loader than the needle-gun of Sadowa. 
On the other hand the Prussians had a much more powerful 
artillery; their officers had been more scientifically 
trained, and the doctrine of a great military writer, 
Clausewitz, had been taken to heart, namely that when 
one corps was engaged the others near to it must march 
to the sound of the guns and strike in at once to support 



246 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

it. Modern German critics point out the faults of 1870, 
and do not think Von Moltke's strategy perfect. They 
think that the great victories were bought too dearly. 
They acknowledge that the policy of attacking at once, 
general supporting general as a matter of course, made 
the victories really great, even if dear, but that a great 
Napoleon would have made them rue it. The general 
verdict is that the Germans won because the units were 
so well handled, as each regiment, brigade, division came 
into action under its own commander, rather than that 
the supervision of the whole campaign by Yon Moltke 
was faultless. 

War was declared July 17. In less than three weeks 
three great armies were converging on the frontier, the 
first under Steinmetz from the lower Rhine, the second 
under the Red Prince from central Germany and Saxony, 
the third under the Crown Prince partly South German 
and partly Prussian. Austria being quiet there was no 
need to watch her, and thus nearly 500,000 men were 
ready. On August 6 the French lay scattered, one army 
of 50,000 under MacMahon in the north of Alsace, another 
of 150,000 under Napoleon based on Metz, and more men 
were coming up ; they were too far apart, and the various 
army corps were also out of touch. The main German 
plan was to drive a wedge between them. Thus the same 
day two battles were fought nearly fifty miles apart. The 
Crown Prince's leading corps fell on MacMahon at Worth 
with inferior numbers 1 , but up came more corps on each 
flank and behind, and the 50,000 French after defending 
some strong woods and slopes with great bravery were 
surrounded by some 90,000 Germans and ceased to exist 
as an army. Steinmetz 2 had a similar problem and won 

1 The Crown Prince himself meant to fight next day, but the corps 
commander by attacking brought on a general action. 

2 Von Alvensleben, commanding a corps of the Red Prince's army, 
marched to the guns and came in on the left of Steinmetz' battle. 



1870 THE GERMAN ATTACK 247 

a similar victory at Forbach-Spicheren. In neither battle 
were the whole available French forces up in line, and no 
supports marched to the sound of the guns. The defence 
was now broken, but the Germans, as if out of breath, 
were slow in pursuit. Napoleon had time to retreat, but 
hesitated too long near Metz till Steinmetz was on him, 
then he turned over the command to Marshal Bazaine 
and escaped. 

The Crown Prince detached part of his force south- 
wards to besiege Strasburg, and himself pushed westwards 
along the main railway line towards Paris. His cavalry 
had lost touch and could not find MacMahon. But there 
was no army to find, for marshal and fugitives had fled 
with all speed to their reserves at Chalons. There was 
a great camp at Chalons, half way between Paris and 
Metz, and Napoleon with MacMahon were creating here 
a new army of reserves and fugitives and militia; we 
must leave them while the Crown Prince was groping his 
way to find them. 

Steinmetz approached Metz from the east just as 
Bazaine was beginning to retreat. Meanwhile the Red 
Prince was marching south of Metz so as to wheel round 
and strike in to the west of it. As the French retreat 
began on August 16 the Red Prince's nearest corps, under 
Von Alvensleben, cut across them near the villages of 
Mars-la-Tour and Vionville, and without any delay 
went into action. Bazaine could have annihilated him, 
but was painfully cautious, so that Von Alvensleben, in 
spite of great loss and only reinforced by one other corps, 
held his ground. The other Grermans were arriving by 
forced marches. Bazaine fell back on the 17th, and 
chose the line of a valley west of Metz leading from 
Gravelotte to the north 1 . On the 18th some 200,000 
Germans of the armies of Steinmetz and the Red Prince 

1 Thus the French fought with their faces, and the Germans with 
their backs, to Paris. 



248 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

combined attacked across the valley on a front of seven 
miles, lost about 20,000 men, and might have been broken 
if Bazaine had but made a counter-attack ; but they per- 
sisted, and at nightfall the Saxons, coming up on the 
extreme left or north, carried the village of Saint Privat. 
Bazaine withdrew into Metz, and was soon securely 
blockaded though he still had 180,000 men. The appalling 
losses of the Germans at least had produced a decisive 
result. 

MacMahon had now an army of 120,000 troops of 
various kinds at Chalons. Common prudence and the 
rules of war dictated that he should take a defensive line. 
But Paris was in an uproar and crying out " Nous sommes 
trahis." The Empress Eugenie feared a revolution, and 
urged her husband to order an advance for the relief of 
Metz. MacMahon could but obey direct orders, however 
stupid. He marched from Chalons, and the Crown Prince, 
hardly able to believe that the news was true, swerved 
aside to head him off. Yon Moltke and the King came 
across from the army besieging Metz. The French were 
edged northwards towards the Belgian frontier, beaten 
in several engagements, driven demoralised into Sedan, 
ringed in on all sides, and under a pitiless shell fire forced 
to surrender. An emperor, a wounded marshal, 80 general 
officers, and over 100,000 men were prisoners on September 
2. The Third Republic was declared in Paris on the 4th. 

There were now about 750,000 Germans in France, 
whether before Metz and Strasburg, or gathering round 
Paris, or on the lines of communication, and no formed 
French army to resist them. The Republicans did their 
best and held out for five months, after the regular armies 
of the Empire had collapsed in just one month from the 
first shot fired. It was heroic, but useless, except indeed 
that France can always think with pride of the raw 
recruits' devotion; and, after all, overpowering disaster is 
less galling than tame submission. But there was no 



250 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

Valmy and no Jemappes for the Third Republic. Indeed 
the lesson of 1792 was misread. The French said that, 
now that they had "it," they would drive back the 
invader, and refused to give up an inch of their territory 
or a stone of their fortresses. There had not been 750,000 
highly disciplined Germans in France in 1792, burning to 
justify themselves as a united nation, and against such the 
raw recruits were powerless in spite of " it," even though 
Garibaldi himself came to fight for "it." The soul of the 
resistance was Leon Gambetta. A few regular soldiers 
and veterans, sailors from the useless fleet, national guards, 
mobile guards or militia, untried conscripts, manned the 
defences of Paris or were formed into armies. General 
Aurelle de Paladines actually won a battle near Orleans 
on November 9, but on October 27 Metz had already been 
surrendered; consequently the Red Prince was free to 
bring his whole army between Orleans and Paris. Neither 
Paladines, nor General Chanzy who succeeded him in 
command of the army of the Loire, could break through 
the Red Prince's lines so as to relieve Paris, and after 
circling round from Orleans to Le Mans Chanzy lost most 
of his men. His movements finally collapsed in January, 
though he came out of the war with a reputation as the 
ablest of the French leaders. Similarly Faidherbe raised 
a northern army and tried to break through from Lille, 
but was beaten in the end. The winter was appallingly 
severe and all the French suffered beyond words. But 
the worst horrors were in store for the last army raised 
by Gambetta and put under General Bourbaki. In January 
he advanced into Burgundy where Garibaldi with his 
volunteers was defending Dijon, and proceeded towards 
Belfort which the Germans, after the fall of Strasburg, 
were besieging in the gap between the south end of the 
Yosges mountains and Switzerland ; it was hoped that he 
would cut the lines of communication between Germany 
and the besiegers of Paris, perhaps even raid in Germany. 



1870-1 REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 251 

He was beaten back after three days' assault on a position 
near Belfort manned by a German force barely one-third 
of his own army, and, as other Germans hastened up, 
the French reduced to 90,000, shoeless and in rags and 
crippled by frost-bite, straggled over into Switzerland. 
In these actions against Chanzy, Faidherbe, and Bourbaki 
the Grermans had the enormous advantage of being not 
only well disciplined, but also well clothed and well shod, 
and therefore able to march quickly in the bitter weather. 

Paris, from which sorties were made in vain, was 
surrendered at the end of January 1871. Finally, peace 
was made by the Treaty of Frankfort in May. A war 
indemnity of five milliards of francs, 200 millions of our 
money, was inflicted, and was actually paid within three 
years. Part of Lorraine, including Metz but not Nancy 
or Toul or Yerdun, and the whole of Alsace, except 
Belfort which still held out beyond the fall of Paris, were 
given up to the German Empire. For the war was no 
longer against Prussia and the North German Confedera- 
tion plus Bavaria and other allies. On January 18 the 
dream of Grerman patriots was at last realised, when in 
the great hall of the palace of Versailles, the capital of 
Louis XIV, now the headquarters of the besieging army, 
King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor 
by the King of Bavaria. 

The French Assembly, which sat first at Bordeaux 
and returned to Versailles to ratify the Treaty of Frank- 
fort, was mostly royalist. Europe, believing all republics 
to be unstable, expected that a Bourbon, whether Henry V, 
who was the last survivor of the direct line, or the 
Orleanist Count of Paris, would soon be chosen. But the 
immediate danger was not from monarchists, but from 
"reds." Early in March 30,000 Germans made a formal 
entry into Paris; on March 18 broke out a city revolution, 
and soon the forts which the Germans were not occupying 
and war material were in the hands of the reds, who set 



252 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

up the Commune of Paris; if we can imagine anything 
similar here, let us call it a violently socialistic City 
Council. The Communists were armed, for they were 
mostly the defenders of Paris against the Germans. The 
Assembly used against the Commune the imperial regular 
troops released from their confinement in Germany, and 
MacMahon was in command; he bombarded the western 
forts and wall from the Germans' old position at Versailles, 
broke into Paris on May 21, and stormed the barricades 
in the streets. The communists set fire to public build- 
ings, such as the Tuileries, and murdered the archbishop 
and other priests; the troops in their turn shot men, and 
women too, the petroleuses who poured oil to feed the 
fires, untried in batches. Meanwhile the Germans looked 
on from the positions they still held on the north and 
east of Paris. 

Outside France the war had two chief results. The 
French garrison was of course withdrawn from Rome, 
and the troops of Victor Emanuel marched in after a 
slight defence by the Papalists. Since then Rome has 
been the capital of United Italy. Pius IX still kept the 
Vatican, the palace adjoining St Peter's; there he shut 
himself up as though he was a state prisoner, and never 
acknowledged the royal government. Leo XIII and 
Pius X have succeeded Pio Nono, Humbert and Victor 
Emanuel III have succeeded Victor Emanuel II, and the 
feeling between Church and State is to-day not quite so 
bitter. 

Secondly, the Tsar of Russia, now that one of the 
Crimean allies was humbled to the dust, thought himself 
strong enough to defy the other. He tore up the Treaty 
of Paris of 1856, and proceeded to build a new arsenal 
and naval base at Sebastopol, and a new fleet for the 
Black Sea. His instinct was quite correct, for Great 
Britain made no effort to stop him. We had since 
the Indian Mutiny clung to a policy of "insularity" or 



1870-6 THE RESULTS OF THE WAR 253 

"splendid isolation," first under Palmerston, and now in 
1870 under Gladstone. It seems that nobody expected 
that this move on the part of Russia would lead so soon 
to a reopening of the Eastern Question, but within six 
years Europe and Great Britain in particular were con- 
vulsed with new excitement. 

The problem was not changed at all in its main features 
since 1853. The Turk still bore rule over a large Christian 
population, and did not on the whole rule badly, but could 
not reform or acknowledge the aspirations of the subject 
races. Rumania indeed was free, and Servia partially 
free, but Bulgaria and Macedonia and other provinces 
were in their old state of subjection. But the position 
of the Tsar was not quite the same. He was, like his 
father, the professed champion of the Christians of the 
Balkans; but in the interval since 1855 he had freed the 
serfs of Russia. More than that, in the same interval 
United Germany and United Italy had become solid facts. 
Yery naturally a similar ideal presented itself to the 
Slavonic nations, and there was a movement towards Pan- 
Slavism to match Pan-Germanism. We shall see that it 
has failed so far. Bismarck with his policy of "blood 
and iron " crushed German Austria, then created a Ger- 
man Empire by the exclusion of Austria and the inclusion 
of Bavaria and others who were excited by a crusade 
against France; also he was able to unite Lutheran 
Prussia and Saxony with Roman Catholic Bavaria. But 
the Austrian Empire has been a barrier against a Pan- 
Slavonic league under Russian leadership, for the Slavs 
of Croatia are Roman Catholics and devoted to Austria, 
whereas the Slavs of Russia are of the orthodox Greek 
Church, and yet the Greeks themselves are not Slavs; 
thus Russia has failed to create a United Slavonic Empire 
by a crusade against Turkey. 

Trouble began by the revolt of Herzegovina against 
the Sultan in 1875. Bulgaria rose in 1876. Then occurred 



254 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

the terrible Bulgarian atrocities when hordes of irregular 
troops, known as Bashi-Bazouks, were let loose and 
murdered thousands of peasants. The excitement in 
Great Britain was intense. Disraeli, our premier, who 
just at this date took the title of Earl of Beaconsfield, was 
thought to be very cold on the question of the massacres; 
it is not unkind to his memory to say that his Jewish 
blood made him hate Russia as the arch-enemy of the 
Jews, and the keynote of his policy was the integrity of 
the Turkish Empire as a barrier against Russia. On the 
Conservative side it was argued that the tale of massacre 
was exaggerated, that Russia was only encouraging the 
revolts of Christians as an excuse to fight Turkey, that 
our duty to the millions of Mohammedans in India for- 
bade us to cease to support the Turks merely because 
they are Mohammedans. On the Liberal side Gladstone 
came out from his retirement, and in pamphlet and speech 
denounced the Turk and all his works; he should be 
driven out "bag and baggage"; "perish India" rather 
than let the needs of India, at which Russia was thought 
to be aiming, be an excuse for passing over Turkish 
cruelties. Beaconsfield retorted by calling Gladstone 
"a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance 
of his own verbosity." Meanwhile relying on Beacons- 
field's support the Turks defied Europe. The Servians and 
Montenegrins armed to help Bulgaria, and were defeated, 
though many thousand Russians were in the Servian 
ranks. In 1877 Russia declared war. Alexander II had 
no fear of French interference, and probably hoped that 
Gladstone's speeches would prevent the British from 
endorsing Beaconsfield's war policy. 

In June 1877 the Russians reached the Danube and 
crossed with ease. They struck at once at the main chain 
of the Balkans and seized the Shipka pass, thus occupying 
a triangle of land, with the river as base, the pass as 
apex. The Turks were split apart; their main army lay 



i8 7 7 RUSSIA AND TUBKEY 255 

between the Russians and the sea, their reinforcements 
were pushed up to the south of the Shipka, and a small 
force under Osman Pasha lay at Plevna to the west. 
Suddenly came news that the Russians had attacked 
Plevna and been beaten back. A second attack was 
made in July, and again they were beaten. In September 
was a third attack, more keen and better led. But 
Osman's men, shooting coolly with their breechloaders 
behind the earthworks which he had thrown up, again 
repulsed the assailants with enormous loss, and even 
Skobeleff, the ablest Russian general, who launched for- 
ward his men in successive waves, could only effect an entry 
to be driven out in turn. The position was very serious 
for the invaders. The Rumanian army had to be called 
in while the reinforcements were arriving. The veteran 
Todleben was summoned. Two things were yet in favour 
of the Russians. The reinforcements arrived by rail; 
it was not necessary to tramp painfully on foot all the 
way from Moscow or the north as in Crimean days. 
Secondly, they were on the inner lines in their triangle, 
and could still bring superior masses to defend any one 
point. Thus they held the Shipka with success against 
Turkish attacks as fierce as their own had been at Plevna. 
The three armies of Turks were quite unable to combine 
as the mountains and the Russians separated them. 
Todleben arrived and undertook a regular siege of Plevna, 
and at last in December after a desperate and unsuccess- 
ful sortie Osman surrendered with the remnants of his 
army smitten by hunger and fever. The war showed the 
exact opposite of what happened in 1870. The loss of 
life was probably even greater. But the Germans always 
attacked 1 and always won in spite of modern rifles; both 
Russians and Turks fought best in defence. 

In the winter months the Russians poured over the 
Balkans, took Adrianople, and were near Constantinople. 
1 Except at Orleans, and at Belfort against Bourbaki. 



256 WATERLOO TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS 

Meanwhile in Asia, after defeat at first, they had routed 
the Turks and taken Kars. The Turks had made their 
great stand in each theatre of the war, had been near to 
winning, and had then collapsed hopelessly. Terms were 
offered, and at San Stefano the Sultan agreed to give 
independence to Servia and Bulgaria. But the voice of 
Europe had yet to be heard. Beaconsfield, backed by 
an excited popular feeling which cried that the Russians 
must not take Constantinople, forgetting the Bulgarian 
atrocities of only eighteen months back, was even ready 
for war. Austria did not wish to see an independent 
Balkan peninsula over which she had no influence. 
Germany, at any rate in words, cared little for the Eastern 
Question, which was not worth the life of one Pomeranian 
grenadier, and therefore Bismarck offered Berlin as a 
meeting-place for a Congress. Whether Beaconsfield 
would have fought is doubtful, for already two members 
of his cabinet had resigned. But the Russians had lost 
very many men and were hard pressed for money, their 
vanguard near Constantinople was not very strong, the 
distance from Russia was great. Bismarck's offer was 
accepted, and the Berlin Congress met. Beaconsfield 
went over himself, with Lord Salisbury his Foreign 
Minister. The chief terms of the treaty were, that Austria 
should have a protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina; 
Servia and Montenegro should be independent and have 
each an accession of territory; Bulgaria should still be 
under the Sultan nominally but have a Christian prince; 
butRumelia south of the Balkans should be Turkish, a point 
for which Beaconsfield strongly contended, so that the 
passes could be held by the Turks in case of a new war; 
Russia should have some land at the expense of Rumania, 
and a large territory in Asia south of the Caucasus, 
including Kars and the port of Batum. 

Between the Congress and the war of 1912 — 13 various 
changes have come. Austria has annexed Bosnia and 



1878 THE BERLIN CONGRESS 257 

Herzegovina into her Empire. Servia has become a 
kingdom. Bulgaria, after Beaconsfield's death and in 
direct defiance of Beaconsfield's dearest wish, took Ru- 
melia and so secured the whole of the Balkan chain; 
Alexander of Battenberg was the first Prince and resigned 
owing to Russian intrigues, and Ferdinand of Coburg 
succeeded and is now King or Tsar. Greece obtained 
Thessaly, and defied Turkey in 1897, but her troops were 
outnumbered and badly beaten. 



M. E. H. 17 



CHAPTER IX 



THE NEW EUROPE 



The chief thought in most minds during the "seventies" 
was: when will France try to take her revenge? The next 
thought was: how long will the Third Republic last? The 
live milliards were paid up in 1873, the army was recon- 
stituted under a five-years scheme of conscription 1 , and 
Bismarck is credited with having twice tried to provoke 
a new war because his enemy had recovered too quickly 
from her humiliation. The idea of la revanche, and of the 
recovery of Lorraine and Alsace, has always been present. 
But the nation has shown wonderful self-restraint, and 
after forty years and more there is still peace. And 
there is still a Eepublic. Henry V gave offence simply 
because his followers persisted in giving to him that 
name, and he died in 1883. Napoleon IV died in Zulu- 
land in one of our little wars in 1879. In 1882 died 
Gambetta, the fierce and uncompromising foe of Germany, 
of Monarchy, and of the Church, and not long after 
him General Chanzy who was marked out as the leader 
in any war of revenge. In 1882 was formed the Triple 
Alliance, when Germany and Austria joined together as 
allies, and brought in Italy so as to secure a naval ally in 
the Mediterranean. Also in 1882 Great Britain was forced 

1 Reduced gradually to two years, raised again in 1913 to three. 



FRANCE SINCE SEVENTY-ONE 259 

to take action in Egypt, thereby causing bad feeling in 
France. 

There have been many ministries in France in the forty 
years, and it would be useless to name the prime ministers. 
At home the chief feature has been anti-clericalism, for 
republicans have always been indignant that clericals, 
while living under the republic's laws, should conspire to 
restore the monarchy. In foreign policy there have been 
periods of anti-British feeling with corresponding colonial 
activity, and periods of anti-German feeling. Thus the 
year 1882 has to be specially noticed, and later on the 
year 1898, because French hostility was then against us 
rather than against Germany. Also during the "eighties" 
and early "nineties" France was steadily drawing nearer 
to Russia, until Nicholas II finally made the Dual Alli- 
ance in 1895. To Russia also sometimes our own country, 
sometimes Cermany, has seemed to be the destined enemy. 
But British and German interests have so far clashed 
that to-day we seem committed to the support of the Dual 
against the Triple Alliance. 

It will be found convenient to follow the course of 
events from the British point of view. Our policy swung 
from "insularity" under Gladstone to "imperialism" under 
Beaconsfield. He, while still Mr Disraeli, first showed his 
imperialistic ideas when in 1875 he bought the shares 
in the Suez Canal which were privately held by the 
Khedive Ismail; these were 176,000 out of a total 400,000 
shares of the original capital, and Frenchmen hold more 
than 200,000, so that our government owns less than half; 
the price was four millions, and the interest to-day is 
one million, 25 per cent, on the outlay. 

The chief result of the Russo-Turkish war was that 
Mohammedan feeling was strongly aroused in various 
countries. At the same time the Russians, angry because 
of Beaconsfield's attitude to Turkey, turned their eyes to 
Central Asia and sought to vex our government in India. 

17—2 



260 THE NEW EUROPE 

The counterpart of "insularity" in India is "masterly 
inactivity 1 ," and this was followed after the Mutiny. But 
Beaconsfield would have none of it. When the Russians 
intrigued in Afghanistan, he was quite ready for an 
Afghan war and declared that he would make a "scientific 
frontier." Russia was visited by the plague of Nihilism 
and was too hard pressed for money for the moment. 
Thus in 1878 — 80 the Afghan war was fought. Abdul 
Rahman was set up as amir, and, though thought to be 
a friend of Russia, proved for many years to be a valuable 
friend of British India. In fact Beaconsfield struck his 
blow quickly before the Russians were able to interfere, 
and a north-west barrier was created against them. 
It was not till 1881 that Skobeleif finally conquered 
Turkestan with merciless thoroughness, and that same 
year Alexander II was murdered by nihilists. Alex- 
ander III, too busy in suppressing anarchy to think of 
India, recalled Skobeleff. In 1885 indeed trouble occurred 
on the Russo- Afghan frontier, but war was avoided. The 
much talked-of invasion of India never got beyond words, 
and Russian expansion being checked in Central Asia, as 
it had been checked in the Balkans, tried to find its way 
through Siberia to the Far East; the next great war 
was not directed by the trans-Caspian railway towards 
Afghanistan and India, but by the trans-Siberian towards 
Manchuria and Japan. 

Meanwhile the French movement of expansion by sea 
began when Jules Ferry, under the leave as it were of 
Bismarck, annexed Tunis in 1881. Gambetta opposed 
him fiercely as this was distracting France from her 
revenge. Ferry fell from power; Gambetta was premier 
for a time and fell in his turn, then died in 1882. Then 
came the outburst of Mohammedan fanaticism in Egypt, 

1 "Masterly inactivity" was the phrase used by Lord Lawrence, when 
Governor-General ; he was the famous John Lawrence who saved the 
Punjab from Mutiny in 1857. 



1878-85 AFGHANISTAN AND EGYPT 2dl 

when a nationalist party arose to claim Egypt for the 
Egyptians as against the French and British who ex- 
ploited their country for the benefit of the Canal share- 
holders, and Arabi Pasha controlled the native army. 
Gambetta would have joined with Gladstone in main- 
taining order and upholding the Khedive Tewfik 1 . His 
successor left Gladstone, a lover of peace, to suppress 
Arabi. Thus Egypt came under our protectorate., and 
the French, ashamed that they had not helped, were 
also sore for the next score of years because Gladstone's 
promise to evacuate Egypt when the Khedive was fit to 
govern was never redeemed. The Mohammedan rising 
of the Mahdi in the Soudan was due partly to the same 
fanaticism, partly to the wild Arab spirit which sought 
to enslave the negroes; after the despatch of Gordon and 
the failure of the relief expedition to save him the Soudan 
was abandoned in 1885. France, in 1883 — 85, under the 
second Ferry ministry, pushed on in Tonquin and Siam, 
Madagascar, and West Africa. Then came the inevitable 
reaction, and an outcry arose that the great loss of life 
from tropical disease and inexperience and savage enemies 
was too large a price to pay for profitless distant colonies. 
Ferry again fell from power and French colonial activity 
cooled down. 

In 1885 a new Balkan problem brought the attention 
of Russia back to Europe. Eastern Rumelia called for 
incorporation with Bulgaria under Prince Alexander, and 
thereby the Berlin Treaty was violated. The Rumeliots are 
mostly Bulgarians by blood and their action was natural, 
but when united they controlled both the north and the 
south of the Balkan ridge 2 . The Tsar Alexander III was 

1 He became Khedive when Ismail, too extravagant and trying to 
imitate western ideas, was deposed. 

2 See page 256. One of Beaconsfield's chief aims at the Berlin 
Congress was to prevent the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Kumelia; 
Lord Salisbury, his colleague then and reputed to be his successor in 
imperialism, promoted the union, probably to cheek Eussia. 



262 THE NEW EUEOPE 

angvy, as though it were the duty of Prince Alexander to 
be the submissive vassal of Russia, and he took Rumelia 
without Russian leave. Servia was tempted to attack the 
newly combined countries and was well beaten. Then, 
cowed by the Tsar's anger, the Prince resigned. Ferdi- 
nand of Saxe-Coburg 1 was chosen to take his place. This 
episode brought out strongly the rivalry of Austria and 
Russia in the Balkans. But whereas in 1870 and in 1877 
Germany and Russia quietly supported each other in a 
time of war, in 1885 Germany by the Triple Alliance was 
bound to Austria. Bismarck ever wished to conciliate 
Russia. But another force was at work, the military 
jealousy between the conquerors of France and the 
conquerors of Turkey. It was ominous that Russian loans 
were now placed in France and no longer in Germany, 
and a Franco-Russian alliance was foreshadowed. 

In 1888 died the great emperor, William I. In his 
old age his influence was entirely for peace, for he had 
won his laurels, and Bismarck's influence over him was 
weaker. The Crown Prince, nominal emperor for a few 
months, was peaceful, and also somewhat unpopular be- 
cause of his fondness for England, his wife's country. 
With the accession of their son William II a new spirit 
appeared. He had been too young to serve in the army 
in 1870; he had not had his share of glory, and had no 
laurels on which to rest, therefore was less pacific. Yet time 
has shown that he is not a fire-eater, and his chief idea has 
been to keep the German army ready and free from rust, 
not to plunge needlessly into war, but to prevent war by 
showing strength. Undeniably, at the same time, the 
German spirit has under him been more pugnacious. His 
first noticeable act was to get rid of Bismarck in 1890. 

To think of France in the later "eighties" and the 
"nineties" is to remember a barely intelligible excite- 
ment, and three great scandals. Between 1886 and 1889 
1 See page 214. 



1886-99 FRENCH TROUBLES AT. HOME 263 

G-eneral Boulanger was the central figure in France as the 
war minister who was the soldiers' friend, who increased 
the army and introduced a new rifle, who rode a fine 
black horse to gladden the eyes of Paris, that is to say 
the melodramatic figure which stood for la revanche. The 
official republicans did not want him, and therefore he 
was both hero and martyr, until at last ridicule ruined 
him and he died in exile in Belgium. But thousands of 
Frenchmen believed in him, especially when an unsavoury 
story was spread abroad that the "legion of honour," the 
decoration dear to every patriot, was being bought and 
sold. Boulanger was noble compared to the President of 
the Republic and his son-in-law, who dishonoured France 
by such traffic. Luckily steady Frenchmen kept their 
heads at the time of the scandal, and a new President 
was chosen, M. Sadi Carnot, grandson of the great Carnot 
of 1793, a man of the highest honour. Then came the 
Panama scandal; a company formed under de Lesseps to 
construct a Panama Canal went bankrupt, partly because 
of the climate of the isthmus and engineering difficulties, 
partly because of the terrible waste of money, fraud, and 
bribery of public men and newspapers; over 1250 millions 
of francs had been subscribed in vain. Yet we are forced 
to admire France. The country repudiated the fraudu- 
lent ones and justice was done. Then, perfectly solvent 
in spite of this loss, the French public put down their 
money ungrudgingly for loans to Russia. The scandals, 
it seems, prevented Tsar Alexander III from making a 
formal alliance with the Republic 1 . Only after his death 
was the Dual Alliance announced by Nicholas II. 

The third scandal was the Dreyfus affair. An army 
captain was suspected of selling military secrets to 
Germany, and was convicted and sent to the horrible 
"Devil's Island" off French Guiana, on what has been 

1 But the French fleet visited Cronstadt in his reign, and the Eussian 
fleet visited Toulon. 



264 THE NEW EUROPE 

acknowledged to have been insufficient evidence. The 
honour of the army seemed to be at stake, and almost all 
French nationalists honestly believed him to be guilty; 
and he was a Jew whom none need pity. So men were 
found who went so far as to manufacture new evidence 
when the affair was reopened. Over all the excitement 
hung the fear that some carefully kept secret might 
be made public, and the result be a German war. The 
affair lasted from 1894 to 1899, the very years when the 
Dual Alliance was new and active. But again we see the 
same encouraging feature in French political life; scandals 
may be bad and excitement seem to be hysterical, but 
France rallies and regains her sense, though of course 
the injured are by that time beyond cure. Against the 
loud-voiced and insincere whose influence has passed 
away in time, against the supporters of Boulanger and 
the persecutors of Dreyfus, we put Presidents Carnot, 
1887 to 1894, murdered by an anarchist at Lyons; Felix 
Faure, 1895 to 1899; and Loubet and Fallieres and 
Poincare; and the Foreign Ministers, Hanotaux and 
Delcasse, whose speeches at various crises in recent 
history have been as dignified as their conduct of affairs 
has been discreet. Yet the pity is that in France 
ministries have had but short lives, owing to the confused 
state of parties. 

Germany in the "eighties" began to think of colon- 
ising. The reasons are not far to seek. An industrial 
and industrious country, with plenty of iron and other 
minerals and coal of her own, developing her commerce 
and manufactures at a great pace since her political 
union, she has hated the idea that, when her sons emi- 
grated owing to pressure of population, they had only the 
Latin states of South America, or the United States, or 
British Dominions, to which to go. But entering late 
on the race for oversea empire she has found no land 
available for colonies except in the tropics. Also her 



GERMAN "WORLD-POLITICS" 265 

methods are those of the stiff Prussian drill-sergeant, 
which do not encourage enterprise as we understand it. 
Naturally in seeking an outlet in East and West Africa, 
or in Samoa, German activity collided with British, and 
thus the two countries for the first time found their 
relations strained. Bismarck said that he acknowledged 
the good services of Britain in the past, but if Germany 
seriously had to defend herself against British exclusive- 
ness in colonial matters the past services must be forgotten. 
It was an aggravation of the position that owing to 
our system of free trade German merchants could rival 
ours in our own lands. At the same time the national 
pride roused in 1870 made the Germans look down on 
the small British army and envious of the navy. His- 
torians taught systematically that those past services of 
Britain, which Bismarck acknowledged, were not very 
great, that Wellington had deliberately deceived Blucher 
at Ligny and was himself saved at Waterloo by Blucher, 
and that really Germany's services to us were the greater. 
We have also to mention the peaceful invasion of England 
by Germans, waiters, clerks, merchants, men of science 
and professors, and often have to feel humiliation because 
our own men show incompetence or conceit and, refusing 
to learn, are ousted by them. 

Before long France, recovering from her bad experi- 
ence of colonial expansion of the early "eighties," found 
that she could do well enough in Madagascar and Ton- 
quin. A revival of French energy was strongly marked 
in the middle of the "nineties." The attitude of Germany 
under William II was for peace. So the strange thing is 
that the Dual Alliance threatened at first, not Germany 
at all, but Great Britain; the energies of Russia were 
devoted to pushing on the trans-Siberian railway with the 
help of French gold, and to securing an outlet to the 
Pacific in the Far East; the energies of France were 
aimed at expansion from Senegal and the French Congo 



266 THE NEW EUROPE 

into the heart of Africa, with an eye to the upper Nile, 
and likewise at further power in Siam. It must not be 
supposed that, between the years of the Ferry ministry in 
1883 — 85 and the Dual Alliance of 1895, French colonisa- 
tion was at a standstill; the occupation of Dahomey, of 
Nigeria, of Timbuctoo, came in successive steps. But 
the friction between Great Britain and France was at its 
worst in the years 1895 onwards. Both Lord Rosebery 
and Lord Salisbury had to be very firm, yet careful to 
avoid war. Indeed it is thought that, had Russia been 
a little more keen to do her share in return for those 
French loans which created the trans-Siberian railway, 
war might easily have occurred. It is not out of place to 
notice that 1895 — 98 were years when the British navy 
became "modern." The new steel armour, steel wire- 
wound guns, and smokeless cordite, were in evidence in 
the batch of ships of the "Majestic" class, which seemed 
to be the last word in naval architecture at the review 
during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. 

Acute as the tension was concerning Nigeria and 
Siam, the greatest danger occurred in 1898 in Egypt. 
Probably in any case Lord Salisbury's ministry would 
have pursued a forward policy. The Soudan had been 
abandoned in 1885, and our work had been to give good 
government to Egypt, to protect the fellaheen or peasants 
against officials, and to take in hand the work of irrigation 
so as to add to the country's productiveness. Yet the 
advance up the Nile was merely postponed. The devas- 
tating rule of the Mahdi, and of his successor the Khalifa, 
in the Soudan had to come to an end. The progress of 
the French across from Senegal was becoming serious. 
They were making for the upper Nile, and therefore 
Sir Herbert Kitchener's expedition to reach Khartoum 
before them was necessary. Kitchener had an ordered 
country behind him, trained native regiments as well as 
British, and a railway. In 1898 he crushed the Arabs. 



i8 9 8 THE EGYPTIAN CRISIS 267 

Proceeding up stream in a gunboat he found Major 
Marchand and a French force at Fashoda. War nearly- 
resulted, yet French good sense prevailed and Marchand's 
men were withdrawn. 

Events far more critical for the Great Powers of 
Europe were taking place in the Far East. The most 
wonderful of all modern wonders is the rise of Japan. 
In 1894 Japan overcame China in war, but the European 
Powers interfered and made her give up the fruits of 
victory; our prime minister, Lord Eosebery, was sympa- 
thetic but stopped short at sympathy. In 1898 there was 
a scramble for places, Germany secured Kiao-Chow from 
China, Russia got Port Arthur. Lord Salisbury, pro- 
bably intent on the Egyptian question, caring little and, 
it is said, knowing little about the Far East, let the 
Russians take Port Arthur and close it against free trade; 
yet he was thought to be the successor to Beaconsfield's 
anti-Russian imperialism. In 1900, during our Boer war, 
the Boxers besieged the Embassies at Pekin, and a relief 
force was sent by all the European Powers and the 
United States and Japan. 

Thus the harmony of the Europeans in the Far East, 
short-lived as it was, was in strange contrast to the sort 
of stale-mate at home where the Triple Alliance and the 
Dual Alliance faced each other. One would think that 
a sense of this contrast was at the heart of the Tsar 
when he proposed a Peace Conference, and the Powers 
sent their representatives to the Hague in 1899. Valuable 
as the Conference has been, and important as it is that 
minds should be accustomed to arbitration in place of 
war, there has been no disarmament. The two Alliances 
still exist. European feeling, we know well and at the 
time we were bitterly angry at it, was entirely unfavour- 
able to us during the Boer war. The newspapers of 
France and Grermany probably represented the actual 
state of public opinion in those countries. But our navy 



268 THE NEW EUROPE 

was undoubtedly strong. Therefore no Power could come 
to the point to help the Boers. And indeed one can hardly 
imagine a serious Franco-German combination to hurt us 
in a cause which concerned them so little, for the Triple 
and the Dual exist only as the result of Franco-German 
rivalry. 

The outcome of the sense of isolation felt by our nation 
during the Boer war has been a realisation that allies are 
definitely needed. A navy is a great thing, but in these 
days, when modern ships are soon out of date and it is 
vastly expensive to continue to build up to a standard of 
superiority, the nation that has no adequate citizen army 
must have allies. In the first place, Great Britain and 
the Dominions have been drawing together and discussing 
Imperial Defence, though a definite plan is difficult of 
adjustment; in the second, Great Britain and the United 
States are at present much more friendly than of old. 
But a formal alliance is binding where ties of sentiment 
may soon be broken, and, whether rightly or wrongly, in 
1902 a formal alliance was made with Japan. Curiously 
enough just at that very time public opinion was changing 
in France, the uselessness of French and British rivalry 
and opposition in various parts of the world was being 
recognised, and the old feeling towards Germany was 
gaining the upper hand once more. The benefit of our 
rule in Egypt was acknowledged. In fact a real Entente 
Cordiale was being created. 

In 1904 came the great Russo-Japanese war. Our 
alliance was formal and binding, but our armed inter- 
vention was only to be active if a second enemy opposed 
Japan. France did not throw in her lot with Russia, and 
therefore Great Britain had not to fight France; indeed, 
when Russian ships of war fired on our fishing boats in 
the North Sea as if they were disguised Japanese torpedo 
craft, the good services of France helped to settle the 
affair by arbitration. But if France had supported Russia 



1904 JAPAN AND THE FAR EAST 269 

and if we had not been pledged in that case to support 
Japan, the result of the war might have been very different. 
The struggle was on more than a Napoleonic scale, battles 
were fought on a front of fifty and even eighty miles, the 
Russians put into the field from first to last 700,000 men 
by means of a single line of rails. It is now generally 
thought that Japan could not have done much more after 
the great loss of life which was the result of victory, that 
her reserves of soldiers were used up and money hard 
to borrow. Therefore the intervention of France would 
probably have turned the scale. The British nation 
at first applauded our " allies." Yet second thoughts 
make some people hesitate; was it wise to let Russia 
be exhausted, and had not the anti-Russian policy of 
Beaconsfield gone too far? At least Russian expansion 
in the Far East had taken off the pressure from Afghani- 
stan. Events have shown that Australia has disliked 
the Japanese alliance, has adopted a scheme of com- 
pulsory military service, and has welcomed with great 
cordiality United States warships. The United States, 
being now a Pacific power since the annexation of the 
Philippine Islands from Spain, and disliking very much 
the presence of Orientals in California, are strongly 
opposed to Japan. Therefore in our traditional opposi- 
tion to Russia have we been hurried into an undesirable 
alliance displeasing alike to Australians and Americans? 
It almost seems as if German influence had been 
deliberately used to drive Russia into this war, for 
William II had called upon Nicholas to maintain the 
cause of civilisation against the "Yellow Peril." No 
sooner was the force of Russia crippled for the time being 
than the Germans used a very dictatorial tone towards 
France in 1905. The immediate question was quite trivial 
and concerned the right of the French to interfere in 
Morocco. But there was more behind. The drawing 
together of Great Britain and France had resulted in 



270 THE NEW EUROPE 

the Entente Cordiale; the two countries agreed to give 
each other a free hand in their own spheres of influence, 
which meant a recognition of the British Protectorate 
over Egypt. The smaller countries were opposed to 
Germany. Even Italy was tiring of the Triple Alliance. 
Therefore the Kaiser felt that, strong as he was, he 
was being surrounded by a ring of active enemies or 
luke-warm allies, and must assert himself by making a 
counter stroke. The opportunity was too good to be 
lost, for Russia seemed to be prostrate at the end of 
a disastrous war and anarchy was rearing its head. 
Accordingly orders were laid on France to abandon her 
Moroccan policy and to dismiss M. Delcasse who was 
responsible for it. Finally a conference was held at 
Algeciras near Gibraltar. Our government stood by the 
French, and the German claims were abated. 

The most striking development of modern Germany 
has been in her Navy, and the most important thing 
in connection with a modern navy is that it must be new 
and up to date. Immediately after the Japanese war we 
began to build vastly improved battleships of the "Dread- 
nought" class, and every new batch of "super-Dread- 
noughts" is stronger in size and speed and gunpower. 
Germany has built at a corresponding rate. The very 
fact that only "Dreadnoughts" count tells against 
us by making comparatively useless the older ships in 
which we had a great superiority. Germany has the 
right to create a fleet to protect her own trade. Yet it is 
idle to dub as alarmists those who see in her naval 
preparations a menace to our trade and even to our 
coasts. There has been for some years a constant be- 
littling, in German books and newspapers, of our strength 
and our importance in Europe, and though the more 
sober views of statesmen influence politics more than a 
wild public opinion, still there is a danger from national 
feeling. Denmark and Belgium, whose geographical 



RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 271 

position makes both Copenhagen and Antwerp strong 
for commerce and for war, fear a violation of their 
territory; Germans do not at all like that much of their 
trade now passes through Antwerp, and that Copenhagen 
hampers their naval power in the Baltic, even though 
they have cut the Kiel Canal. The problem of a popu- 
lation of sixty millions requiring expansion is vastly 
serious. Already German merchants have overflowed into 
neighbouring countries, even into France, and in great 
numbers into Italy. Yet beyond national jealousy there 
is no excuse for war. And the strength of socialism in 
both France and Germany, the great expense of arma- 
ments both for land and sea — we return to our old 
argument that no nation yet has been able to maintain 
army and navy, witness the reigns of Philip II, Louis XIV 
and Napoleon — and the fear that a general conflict would 
upset international finance, all tend to peace. 

Meanwhile the Balkan problem has made us forget 
Japan. In 1908 a revolution dethroned the Sultan, and 
Europe expected that the party of the Young Turks would 
put life into the Ottoman Empire. Austria replied by con- 
verting the protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina into 
actual sovereignty, and Germany openly stood by Austria. 
Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria proclaimed himself Tsar and 
absolutely free of Turkey. Servia and Montenegro were 
frightened of Austrian influence. Later, Italy laid hands 
on Tripoli. Now the hope that the Youug Turks would 
really make proper reforms, govern properly, and sweep 
away corruption, was not realised; in particular the army, 
in spite of German advice which was given in view of 
a possible assistance from Turkey to Germany in case of 
a Russian war, was not in good condition. On the other 
hand the young Balkan states made decided progress. 
Yet when the war of 1912 broke out Europe was certainly 
surprised. That Servia and Bulgaria and Greece could 
be allies was wonderful ; that their armies would drive in 



272 THE NEW EUROPE 

the Turks on all sides was more wonderful still. They 
fought against the expressed wishes of the Concert of 
Europe. How would they use their victory? For it 
was notorious that however much they hated the Turks, 
they were bitterly jealous of each other, and all three 
desired to secure Salonika, the only good port of the 
coast. 

Bulgaria, it would be acknowledged, had at first the 
best sympathies of Europe ; on her had fallen the task of 
beating the main Turkish force, her best troops suffered 
terribly in action and were disorganised by the very 
suddenness of her success, and the impetus of her attack 
was spent before the strong lines which covered Con- 
stantinople. At last, after a pause, her army won 
Adrianople. But the Greeks had won Salonika. Then, 
in a fit of madness, the Bulgarians attacked the Greeks. 
The Servians supported the Greeks. The Rumanians 
threatened from beyond the Danube. Their best men 
already used up, the Bulgarians were beaten everywhere, 
and then the Turks regained Adrianople. We have hardly 
yet got the truth as to how far the various Christian 
nations, learning only too well the lesson of the Turks, 
committed atrocities upon the Turks when they had their 
chance, and upon each other. Since Gladstone's attacks 
on the Turks and their atrocities in 1876 we have been 
sceptical about the word. Yet what we have heard is 
very distressing. 

The Balkan problem, otherwise the Eastern Question, 
still remains. The Greeks hold Salonika and Aegean 
Islands; the Servians are not satisfied, for Austria will 
not allow them access to the Adriatic; the Rumanians 
may yet want more at Bulgaria's expense, although they 
took no share in the original war. Meanwhile the Turks 
have recovered somewhat, and have a chance to show 
that they can reform as they have always promised to 
do since pre-Crimean days. Amongst all the saddening 



i 9 1 2-i3 THE BALKAN STATES 273 

events the one ground for satisfaction is that the Great 
Powers have not been involved in war. 

The last point for consideration is the position of 
the United States. They have a modern fleet of good 
quality. They are now opening the Panama Canal, which 
is a marvellous instance of engineering difficulties over- 
come and tropical disease baffled. They adhere to the 
Monroe Doctrine and wish to see no Europeans interfere 
with Latin America, yet the Latin races do not like them. 
They have their Canadian problem and their Japanese 
problem, and their own labour troubles. And since they 
have turned the Spaniards out of Cuba and have annexed 
the Philippines, they have a future which the Panama 
Canal may make very important for Europeans. 



M. e. h. 18 



INDEX 



Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), treaty of, 
124, 133, 140 

Aberdeen, Lord, 226, 230 

Academy, French, 74, 80 

Acre, siege of, 168 

Adrianople, 212-3, 226, 255, 272 

Afghanistan, 260, 269 

Albania, 211 

Albert, of Austria, 3, 48, 50 

Alexander, of Battenberg, 257, 
261-2 ; of Parma, 3, 18, 33-7, 
42-6, 70; I, of Russia, 175, 
177-8, 183, 191, 207, 211-2, 215, 
226 ; II, of Russia, 230, 236, 260 ; 
III, of Russia, 260-3 

Algeciras, conference at, 270 

Algeria, 8, 90, 216 

Ali Pasha, 211 

Alma, battle of, 229 

Almanza, battle of, 105 

Alsace, 61, 90, 153, 161, 203, 246, 
251, 258 

Alva, Duke of, 12, 17, 23, 25, 29, 
31-2, 45 

Alvensleben, General Von, 246-7 

America, North, 120-1, 128, 139-41, 
144, 146-7, 198, 239-40, 267-9, 
273; South, 208, 238, 273 

Amiens, treaty of, 170 

Anne, Queen of France, 64-5, 74, 
98 

Antwerp, Spanish, 14-5, 19, 24-5, 
28, 32, 34, 36, 48, 84, 104, 106-7 ; 
Austrian, 114, 156 ; French, 172, 
189; Dutch, 197, 204; Free, 
214-5, 271 

Arabi Pasha, 261 



Aragon, 3, 12-3 

Armed Neutrality, 141, 170 

Artois, see "Charles X" 

Assembly, National, 147-51 ; Legis- 
lative, 151 

Athens, 93, 212 

Auerstadt, battle of, 133, 175-7, 
180 

Augsburg, treaty of, 2-5, 49, 51, 
55 ; city of, 15, 59, 133 ; league 
of, 94 

Aurelle de Paladines, General, 250 

Austerlitz, battle of, 133, 175-7, 
180 

Austria, 1-3, 49, 55, 61, 92-4, 102, 
108, 117, 122-4, 130, 139, 153, 
162, 167, 172, 181-2, 187-8, 
204-6, 210, 220-1, 228, 237-8, 
240-3, 245 ; see also " Haps- 
burgs" and "Triple Alliance" 

Azov, 93, 110, 139 

Badajoz, siege of, 58, 190 

Bailly, mayor of Paris, 148, 151 

Balaclava, 229-31 

Baltic, 15, 51, 55, 271 

Barcelona, 13, 103, 105 

Barneveldt, John, 81 

Barrier, 108, 114 

Basle, treaty, 133, 161 

Bastille, the, 143, 148 

Batum, port, 256 

Bavaria, 51, 55, 59, 61, 96, 100-3, 
122-4, 139, 166, 170, 174; 
Kingdom, 182, 188, 196, 204, 
237, 240, 242, 245, 251, 253 

Baylen, battle of, 185 



INDEX 



275 



Bayonne, 23, 45, 79, 187, 197 
Bazaine, Marshal, 247-8 
Belfort, fortress, 250-1 
Belgians, Belgium; 204, 214, 270; 

see ' ' Netherlands ' ' 
Belgrade, 119 
Bellinzona, 10, 165 
Beresina, passage of the, 193 
Berlin, Decree, 178, 192 ; Congress, 

256, 261 
Bernadotte, Marshal and King, 176, 

183, 192, 195 
Bismarck, 237, 240, 242, 245, 256, 

258, 262, 265 
Blanc, Louis, 217-8 
Blenheim, battle of, 101, 103, 123, 

133 
Blucher, Marshal, 195-202, 265 
Bologna (Papal Legation), 11, 165, 

234 
Borodino, battle of, 192 
Bosnia, 256, 271 
Bohemia, 3, 6, 50, 61, 132, 220, 

242 
Boulanger, General, 263-4 
Boulogne, port and camp, 172-4 
Bourbaki, General, 250-1, 255 
Bourbon, House of, 21-2, 43, 98, 

113-4, 117-8, 152, 204, 235 
Brandenburg, mark and electorate, 

3, 57, 61, 91, 96, 100, 111-2, 

125 
Breda, treaty of, 82, 107 
Breitenfeld, battle of, 58 
Bremen, 51, 61-2, 110, 133, 181, 

206 
Brenner Pass, the, 4, 7, 9, 56, 133, 

165 
Brest, port, 136, 172 
Brill, 28-9, 31-2, 36, 107 
Brittany, 143, 156, 158 
Bruges, 14, 107 
Brussels, 24, 35, 104, 198-9 
Buda, 6, 69, 93, 133, 220 
Bulgaria, 210-11, 253-7, 261-2, 

271-2 
Burgos, 185, 187, 190, 196 

Cadiz, 14, 38, 42, 187, 189 
Calais, 1, 21, 40 

Calvin, Calvinists, 5, 24, 31, 34, 
50, 81 



Cambrai, league of, 7, 107 

Campo Formio, treaty of, 165, 167, 
170 

Canada, French, 77, 121, 128, 135; 
British, 137, 140, 273 

Canals, 14, 71, 76, 112, 244, 259, 
261 271 273 

Canning, 178, 186, 189, 208-9, 212, 
239 

Canrobert, General, 229, 231 

Cape, 7, 178, 244 

Carbonari, the, 215 

Carlos, Don, 118 ; see " Charles III 
of Spain " 

Carlowitz, treaty of, 93, 97 

Carnot, 157-8, 162, 167; grand- 
son, 263-4 

Carteret, Lord, 122, 134 

Castlereagh, Lord, 186, 189, 196-7, 
203, 208 

Cateau Cambr£sis, treaty of, 2, 9, 
20 

Catharine, of Medici, 21-4, 31, 45; 
of Bussia, 138-9, 161 

Cavaignac, General, 218-9 

Cavour, Count, 233-5 

Chalons, camp, 247-9 

Chambord, Count of, " Henry V," 
152, 213, 251-2, 258 

Chanzy, General, 250-1, 258 

Charleroi, 96, 198-9 

Charles I, of England, 52-3, 63, 
98; II, 75, 82-8, 121; II, of 
Spain, 83, 97-9 ; III, 115, 117-8 
(Don Carlos) ; V, Emperor, 1-5, 
8-9, 12-4, 17-8, 20 ; VI (Arch- 
duke Charles), 97-8, 105-8, 
113-4, 117, 119, 122; IX, of 
France, 21-3, 31 ; X (Count of 
Artois), 118, 146, 148, 151-2, 
212-6 ; XII, of Sweden, 109-10, 
115 ; Albert, of Bavaria, 122-4 ; 
of Sardinia, 217, 219-22; 
Austrian Archduke, 166, 174, 
188 

China, 238, 267 

Christian IV, of Denmark, 51-5, 
63; IX, 213, 238 

Clausewitz, military writer, 245 

Cleves, duchy, 49, 72, 111 

Coblenz, 205 

Code Napoleon, 170 



276 



INDEX 



Colbert, 75-7, 80, 86, 89, 95, 170 
Coligny, Admiral, 21, 28, 31 
Cologne (Koln), electorate, 2, 100, 

133 
Committee of Public Safety, the, 

157-60 
Commune of Paris, the, 153-4, 252 
Concordat, the, 170 
Conde, Princes of, 21-2, 64-5, 74, 

86, 151; (d'Enghien), 172 
Confederation of the Rhine, 182, 

192 
Constantinople, 210-1, 226, 230, 

255-6, 272 
Convention, the National, 154-62, 

170 
Copenhagen, 109, 170, 178, 182, 

271 
Cornice, road, 11, 170 
Cornwallis, Lord, 141 ; Admiral, 

172 
Corunna, battle of, 186, 191 
Crete, 91, 212, 226 
Crimea, the, 227-33, 255 
Croatia, 60, 221, 243, 253 
Cromwell, 65-8, 75, 101, 120-1 
Custine, Marquis, 154, 157 
Custozza, battles of, 220, 242 

Danton, 158-60 

Dantzig, 116, 133, 138, 161, 177, 

194-5, 197, 206 
Davout, Marshal, 175-6, 180, 188, 

195-6 
Delcasse\ 264, 270 
Denmark, 51-2, 109, 178, 182, 206, 

237-8, 270 
D'Erlon, General, 199, 200 
Desaix, General, 169 
Dettingen, battle of, 123, 133 
Directory, the, 162, 167-9 
Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 210, 

254, 256, 259, 261, 267-8 
Dover, 25, 85, 88 
Drake, Francis, 16, 30, 38-42, 64, 

120-1 
Dresden, 195 
Dreyfus, 263 
Dual Alliance, the, 259, 262-3, 

267 
Dumouriez, General, 153-6 
Dunkirk, 68, 75, 79, 107, 161 



Eastern Question, the, 119, 209-11, 

226-7, 253-7, 271-2 
Eckmuhl, battle of, 188 
Edicts, of Emancipation, 236 ; 

of Nantes, 45, 54, 68, 70, 89, 91 ; 

of Eestitution, 55 
Egmont, Count, 25 
Egypt, 168-70, 178, 211-2, 216, 

226, 259-61, 266-8, 270 
Elizabeth of England, 15, 24, 

28-32, 35-6; the Palatinate, 50, 

98 ; Parma and Spain, 115-7 ; 

Russia, 131, 138; Valois and 

Spain, 22-3 
Entente Cordiale, 238, 268, 270 
Essling, battle of, 133, 188 
Eugene, of Savoy, 100-8, 116, 119 ; 

of France, 183, 188, 192, 197 
Eugenie, Empress, 225, 244, 248 
Eylau, battle of, 133, 177, 180 

Faidherbe, General, 250-1 

Family Compact, 114, 137, 141 

Ferdinand of Brunswick, (uncle) 
127, 135; (nephew) 153, 175; 
Coburg and Bulgaria, 214, 257, 
262, 271 ; I, Emperor, 1, 3, 5, 6, 
50; II, 50, 53-5, 59, 60; I, of 
Naples. 118, 204, 219, 223 

Ferry, Jules, 260-1 

Florence, 11, 236 

Flushing, 32, 36-7, 107 

Fontenoy, battle of, 107, 124 

Forbach, battle of, 247 

France, Monarchy, 20-3, 31-2, 
43-6, 54, 61, 64-5, 68, 70-80, 
83-91 ; rivalry with England, 
120-1, 128-9, 140; see "Na- 
poleon," and "Dual Alliance" 

Franche Comte, 62, 90 

Francis of Anjou, 22, 35 ; I, Em- 
peror (of Lorraine), 117, 124, 
152; II, Emperor, 172; Joseph, 
Emperor of Austria, 152, 221, 
228 234 243 

Frankfort, 59, 133, 196, 206, 223, 
238, 242 ; treaty of, 251 

Frederick, the Great Elector, 88, 
111, 125; I, of Prussia, 112; 
II, 112, 122-7, 131-9, 177, 181 ; 
of Palatinate and Bohemia, 49, 
61, 98 ; Crown Prince of Prussia, 



INDEX 



277 



241, 246-8, 262; Charles, " 
Prince," 241, 246-7, 250 
Friedland, battle of, 133, 177 
Fronde, Frondeurs, 65, 75 



Ked 



Gambetta, Leon, 250, 258, 260 
Garibaldi, 222-3, 235, 244, 250 
Gastein, treaty of, 238 
Genoa, 10, 13, 25, 163, 167, 169, 

183, 204, 235 
George I, of England, 110; III, 

204; of Greece, 213 ; William of 

Brandenburg, 51, 57 
Germany, Holy Roman Empire, 

2-6, 49-50, 54-5, 57-63, 92-3, 

100-1, 122-4, 132, 172, 181-2; 

after 1814, 215-6, 223-4, 237-8, 

240-3; Empire, 251 
Ghent, 33-4, 106-7 
Gibraltar, 103, 114-6, 129, 136, 

141 
Girondists, 151, 153, 155 
Gladstone, 227, 253-4, 259, 261, 

272 
Gneisenau, 195, 200 
Gordon, General, 261 
Gravelines, 20, 40, 107 
Gravelotte, battle of, 247, 249 
Greece, Greeks, 209-13, 257, 

271-2 
Grouchy, Marshal, 198, 200-1 
Guise, Dukes of, 21-2, 43 
Guizot, 216 
Gustavus Adolphus, 52, 56-61, 73, 

80, 102, 109, 181 

Haarlem, 32, 107 

Hague, the, 84, 107, 267 

Halberstadt, 61, 111, 133 

Hamburg, 133, 181, 195-6, 206 

Hanotaux, 216, 264 

Hanover, 100, 110, 122, 127-30, 

134, 173-4, 198, 205, 237, 240-2 
Hapsburg, House of, 2-3, 50, 98, 

113, 117, 152 
Henriette Marie, 53, 75, 98 
Henriette of Orleans, 85, 98 
Henry III, of France, 22, 43-4; 

IV, 22, 31, 43-9, 54, 65, 68, 

70-1, 75, 98, 144, 146 
Herzogovina, 253, 256-7, 271 
Hoche, General, 157, 161, 168 



Hofer, Tyrolese, 182 
Hohenlinden, battle of, 133, 170 
Hohenzollern, House of, 111-2, 

223 237 244 
Holland, Dutch, 27-9, 32-7, 48-9, 

63-7, 81-3, 86-8, 96, 107, 162, 

167, 198, 204, 214-5; see 

' ' Orange ' ' 
Holstein, 206, 237, 242 
Holy Alliance, 207, 226 
Horn, Count, 25 
Hubertusburg, treaty of, 138 
Huguenots, 21, 31, 43-5, 54, 68, 

91, 112, 125 
Hungary, 3, 6, 69, 92-3, 119, 

122-3, 133, 139, 145, 210, 217-21, 

226, 234, 243 

Ibrahim Pasha, 212, 216 
Indies, East, 7, 49, 64-5, 77, 82, 
128, 137, 141, 168, 171, 227, 
238, 259; West, 41, 64, 82, 
120-1, 137, 158, 171, 173 
Inkerman, battle of, 230 
Innsbruck, 20, 133, 165 
Inquisition, the, 13, 24, 68 
Ionian Islands, the, 171, 183 
Italy, 9-11, 56, 104, 113-4, 117, 
163-7, 183, 215; struggle for 
"United Italy," 219-23, 233-6, 
242, 252; see "Triple Alliance " 
Ivry, battle of, 44 

Jacobins, the, 153, 155, 157, 159 
James I, of England, 47, 50, 52, 98 ; 

II, 89, 100 
Japan, 260, 267-9 
Jassy, treaty of, 161 
Jellacic, of Croatia, 221 
Jemmappes, battle of, 154, 250 
Jena, battle of, 133, 175-7, 195, 

242 
Jerome Bonaparte, 182 
Jesuits, 5, 49 
John, Don, of Austria, 3, 8, 18, 23, 

27, 33; George of Saxony, 51, 

57-8, 60 
Joseph II, Emperor, 138-9, 152 
Joseph Bonaparte, 183-5, 190, 

195-6 
Jourdan, General, 157, 161, 166 

18—3 



278 



INDEX 



Kainardji, treaty of, 139, 226 
Ears, 256 
Khartoum, 266 
Kiel, 271 

Kolin, battle of, 132-3 
Koniggratz, battle of, 241. 
Kossuth, 217, 220 
Kunersdorf, battle of, 133-4 

La Hogue, battle of, 95 

La Bochelle, 31, 54, 72 

La Vendee, 143, 156, 161 

Lafayette, General, 148-9, 151, 
154, 213 

Lamartine, 217 

Langensalza, battle of, 242 

Lannes, Marshal, 176, 180, 185, 188 

Laudon, Austrian General, 127, 
135-6 

League, the Catholic, France, 43-5 ; 
Germany, 51, 59 

Leipzig, battles of, 58, 60, 133, 196 

Lens, battle of, 64 

Leoben, truce of, 166 

Leopold I, Emperor, 50, 88, 92; 
I, of Belgium, 213-4 ; of Dessau, 
79 125 

Lepanto, battle of, 8, 26-7, 33, 91 

Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 222, 244, 
263 

Leuthen, battle of, 126, 132-3 

Leyden, 32, 107 

Liege, 107, 198-9, 204 

Ligny, battle of, 198-9, 265 

Lille, 79, 84, 106-7, 250 

Lisbon, 7, 14-5, 38, 41, 49, 100, 
136, 186 

Lissa, battle of, 242 

Lobau, 188 

Lodi, battle of, 164-5 

Lombardy, 2, 9, 99, 114, 164, 167, 
183, 204, 234 

Lorraine, 20-2, 61, 117, 203, 251, 
258 

Louis XIII, 49, 61, 64, 72-4, 98; 
XIV, 20, 34, 37, 45, 67, 75-108, 
113, 118; XV, 113, 118, 128, 
131, 140-2; XVI, 118, 140, 
144-53, 155; XVIII, 118, 152, 
203, 206, 213, 225; Bonaparte, 
182, 191 ; Philippe, 213-7 

Louisburg, 124, 136 



Louvois, 75, 78, 86, 95 
Lubeek, 181, 206 
Luneville, treaty of, 170 
Luther, Lutherans, 4, 20, 51, 57 
Lutter, battle of, 54, 133 
Lutzen, battle of, 60, 133 
Luxemburg, Dnke of, 96 ; duchy 

of, 206 
Lyon, 156, 161 

Mack, Austrian general, 174 
MacMahon, Marshal, 232, 234, 

246-8, 252 
Madras, 124 

Madrid, 105, 108, 185, 190, 196 
Maestricht, 48, 58, 107 
Magdeburg, 4, 58, 111, 133, 182, 

194, 197, 205 
Magenta, battle of, 165, 234 
Mahdi, the, 261, 266 
Mainz, Mayence, 2, 58, 133, 154, 

156, 205, 249 
Malaga, battle of, 103 
Malakoff, fort, 231-2 
Malplaquet, battle of, 107-8 
Malta, 167, 170 
Manin, Daniel, 219 
Mantua, 56, 73, 164-6, 220 
Marches, the papal, 11, 165, 236 
Margaret of Parma, 3, 23-5 
Marengo, battle of, 165, 169, 180 
Maria Theresa, of Spain, 75, 98; 

of Austria, 98, 117, 122-4, 127, 

130, 138-9, 152 
Marie Antoinette, 146, 151-2 
Marie Louise, 152, 191 
Marlborough, Duke of, 79, 99-108, 

113, 123, 125, 129, 137 
Marmont, Marshal, 188, 190 
Mars la Tour, battle of, 247, 249 
Mary Stuart, 22, 28, 37 
Massena, Marshal, 166, 169, 

188-90 
Maximilian, of Mexico, 239 
Mayenne, Duke of, 43-5 
Mazzini, 215, 217, 222, 233 
Mediterranean, the, 13, 25-7, 63, 

76, 103, 162-3, 167-9, 209-10, 

258 
Mentana, battle of, 244 
Metternich, 195-6, 207-8, 211-2, 

215, 219 



INDEX 



279 



Metz, 20, 61-2, 90, 246-51 

Mexico, 225, 238-40, 244 

Milan, 9, 117, 219, 234 

Military developments, Spanish, 

, 17-8, 64; Dutch, 34, 48; 
Swedish, 56-7; French, 78-80, 
157-8, 179-81 ; Prussian, 125-7, 
241, 245-6; English, 30-1, 47, 
53, 65-6, 101-2, 125-6 ; Eussian, 
134, 192, 232-3, 255, 269 

Minden, battle of, 126, 133-5 

Minorca, 114-5, 129, 134, 137, 
141, 169 

Mirabeau, 147, 150-1 

Mississippi, the, 119, 121 

Missolonghi, 211-2 

Modena, 11, 165, 204, 234 

Mollwitz, battle of, 123, 133 

Moltke, Marshal von, 237, 241, 
245-6, 248 

Monroe doctrine, the, 208,239, 273 

Mons, 96, 106-8, 199 

Montenegro, 254-6, 271 

Moore, Sir John, 186, 190 

Morea, the, 211-2 

Moreau, General, 157, 166, 168, 
170, 172, 195 

Morocco, 269 

Moscow, 184, 193-4 

Murat, Marshal, 177, 182, 184, 
192, 197 

Namur, 96, 99, 103, 107, 198-9 
Naples, 2, 11, 114, 117-8, 178, 

183-4, 204, 207, 235 
Napoleon I, 100, 157, 161-203, 

245-6; III, 218, 222, 224-40, 

244-8 
Narva, battle of, 109 
Naval developments, 25-7, 39-41, 

67, 77-8, 82-3, 95-6, 103, 135-6, 

140-1, 162-3, 167-9, 172, 232-3, 

239-40, 266, 270 
Navarino bay, battle of, 212 
Navigation Act, 66, 82, 121 
Neerwinden, battle of, 156 
Nelson, 168, 172-3 
Netherlands, Spanish, 14-7, 23-5, 

27-9, 32-7, 48-9, 83-4, 99, 104, 

106-8; Austrian, 114, 124, 130, 

155; under France, 156, 167; 

see "Belgium" 



New Orleans, 121 

New York, 82-3 

Ney, Marshal, 175, 179, 180, 186, 

193, 198-201, 207 
Nice, 165-7, 183, 233, 235 
Nicholas I, of Eussia, 212, 215, 

226-30; II, 259, 263, 269 
Nimwegen, treaty of, 89, 90, 97, 

106 
Norway, 204 
Novara, battle of, 221 
Nuremberg, 4, 59, 111, 133 

Oporto, 186 

Orange, House of, 98, 204; 

Frederick Henry, 52, 63 ; 

Maurice, 46, 48-9, 52, 72, 81; 

William I, 24-5, 28, 35-6, 46; 

William II, 81 ; William III, 87, 

94, 123, 129 
Orleans, Dukes of, 74, 85, 98, 113, 

116, 148-9, 159, 213 ; city, 250 
Osman Pasha, 255 
Ostende, 48, 104, 107, 116 
Otho of Bavaria, 213 
Oudenarde, - battle of, 106-7 

Palatinate, the, 3, 50, 61, 94 
Palmerston, Lord, 210, 217, 227, 

230, 234-6, 240, 253 
Panama Canal, the, 263, 273 
Papacy, 4-5, 11, 21, 90-1, 167, 170, 

172, 204, 217, 221-3, 234-6, 244, 

252 
Paris, 44, 148-54, 172, 215, 224, 

247, 250-2 ; treaties of, 137, 140, 

203, 232, 252 
Parlement de Paris, 71, 144, 149 
Parma, 11, 117-8, 165, 183, 204, 234 
Partition Treaties, 97 
Passaro, battle of, 115 
Pavia, battle of, 10 
Pelissier, Marshal, 231-2 
Peter of Eussia, 109-10 
Philip II of Spain, 1-3, 8, 47 ; V, 

98-9, 113, 117-8 
Pichegru, General, 157, 161, 172 
Piedmont, 10, 165 
Pitt, (father) 123, 127, 134; (son) 

136, 156-7, 169, 173, 178 
Pius IX, 217, 219, 221, 223, 252 
Plevna, siege of, 255 



280 



INDEX 



Plombieres, meeting at, 233 
Poland, 52, 56, 59, 92, 109-11, 116, 
131; partition of, 138-9, 155-6, 
161-2; under Napoleon, 179, 
182 ; under Eussia, 206-7, 215, 
226, 236 
Poltawa, battle of, 109 
Pomerania, 57, 61, 110-1, 133 
Port Arthur, 267 
Portugal, 7, 38-9, 41, 65, 100, 

184-7, 189 

Pragmatic Sanction, the, 117, 122 

Prussia, 111-2, 125, 155, 161-2, 

173-4, 175-7, 194, 209, 237-8, 

240-5, 251 ; see ' ' Hohenzollern," 

"Frederick," "William I," &c. 

Pyrenees, treaty of, 75, 84, 99 

Quadrilateral, the, 164-5, 220, 234 
Quatre Bras, battle of, 199-200 
Quebec, 126, 136 
Quiberon Bay, battle of, 136 

Radetsky, Marshal, 220-1 

Raglan, Lord, 229-31 

Ramillies, battle of, 104, 107, 199 

Rastadt, treaty of, 113 

Ratisbon (Regensberg) , 4, 133, 188 

Rhine, Rhineland, 4, 94, 154, 161, 

166-7, 181, 198, 205, 237, 242, 

245 
Richelieu, 20, 54, 56, 61, 64, 68, 

72-4. 144 
Rivoli, battle of, 164-6 
Robespierre, 159-60 
Rocroi, battle of, 64 
Rodney, Admiral, 141 
Rome, 167, 183, 204, 221-2, 235, 

252 
Roon, General von, 237, 245 
Rosebery, Lord, 266-7 
Rossbach, battle of, 132-3 
Rouen, 31, 44, 150 
Rousseau, 145, 217 
Rumania, 210-2, 253, 255, 272 
Rumelia, 256-7, 261 
Russia, 109-10, 119, 127, 131, 

134-6, 155, 161, 168-9, 173-8, 

191-5, 206, 210-3, 221, 226-33, 

236, 245, 252-7, 259-63, 267-9 
Ruyter, Admiral de, 67, 87 
Ryswick, treaty of, 97, 99, 105 



Sadowa, battle of, 133, 241 

St Bartholomew, 32, 43 

St Gotthard, (Switz.) 9, 165; 

(Austria) 92 
St Privat, battle of, 248-9 
St Vincent, Cape, battle of, 167 
Salamanca, 187, 190 
Salisbury, Lord, 256, 261, 266-7 
Salonika, 272 

San Stefano, treaty of, 256 
Saragossa, siege of, 185 
Saratoga, surrender at, 140 
Sardinia, 2, 11, 114-5 ; Kingdom 

of, 117, 163, 183, 204-5, 233-5 
Savoy, Duchy of, 10, 56, 70, 73, 

100, 115, 167, 215; see "Sar- 
dinia" 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, House of, 214 
Saxony, Electorate, 3, 51, 57, 125, 

131, 179; Kingdom, 182, 197, 

204, 240-2, 245, 248, 253 
Scharnhorst, 194 
Schleswig, 237-8, 242 
Schwartzenburg, Prince, 197 
Sebastopol, 228-33, 252 
Sedan, surrender at, 107, 248-9 
Senegal, 265-6 
Servia, 210-1, 253-4, 256-7, 262, 

271-2 
Shipka Pass, the, 254 
Siberia, 260, 265-6 
Sicily, 2, 11, 115, 117-8, 183, 204, 

235 
Silesia, 112, 122-4, 130-4, 138, 

241 
Silistria, 228 
Sinope, 228 

Skobeleff, General, 255, 260 
Slav, Slavonic races, 6, 210, 220, 

243, 253 
Sobieski, John, of Poland, 92-3 
Solferino, battle of, 165, 234 
Soudan, the, 261, 266 
Soult, Marshal, 175-6, 179-80, 

186, 189-90, 195-6 
South Sea Company, the, 119, 121 
Spain, 1-2, 8, 12-9, 23-5, 45, 

63-5, 68, 74-5, 83-4, 97-9, 103, 

105, 108, 113-4, 186-91, 208, 

244 
Spicheren, battle of, 247, 249 
Spinola, 10, 48, 52, 56, 63 



INDEX 



281 



States General, the, Netherlands, 

33; France, 141-2, 145, 147 
Stein, Prussian reformer, 194, 206 
Steinmetz, General, 246-7 
Stettin, 110, 112, 195, 197 
Stralsund, siege of, 55-6, 133 
Strasburg, 89-90, 97, 133, 247, 250 
Stratford de Eedcliffe, Lord, 227-8 
Sully, Duke of, 71, 75-6 
Suvaroff, Eussian general, 168 
Sweden, 52, 55 (see "Gustavus"), 

61, 84, 109-10, 131, 178, 182, 192, 

204 
Swiss, Switzerland, 9-10, 73, 78, 

154, 167, 171, 250 

Talavera, battle of, 186 
Tallard, Marshal, 99, 103 
Tchernaya, river, 230 
Temple, Sir W., 84 
Thorn, fortress, 133, 138, 161 
Tilly, Count, 51, 54, 58-9 
Tilsit, treaty of, 178, 207 
Todleben, General, 229, 231, 255 
Tonquin, 261, 265 
Torgau, battle of, 133, 136 
Torres Vedras, lines of, 189, 193 
Toul, 20, 61-2, 249, 251 
Toulon, 103, 105, 156, 161, 172 
Toulouse, battle of, 197 
Tournai, 107, 124 
Trafalgar, battle of, 174 
Trent, Council of, 5 
Triple Alliance, the, 84, 258, 262, 

267, 270 
Tripolitza, 211 
Tunis, 8, 18, 260 
Turenne, Marshal, 68, 74, 79, 86, 

88-9, 102 
Turin, 104, 233 
Turkestan, 260 
Turkey, Turks, 5-7, 13, 25-7, 69, 

89, 91-3, 109-10, 119, 138, 161, 

168, 209-12, 226-8, 253-7, 259, 

271-2 
Tuscany, 11, 117, 183, 204, 221-2, 

234-5 
Tyrol, the, 4, 101, 182, 204, 221 

Ulm, 4, 133, 174 
Utrecht, Union of, 33; treaty of, 
107-8, 113, 117, 121, 129, 140 



Valmy, cannonade of, 154, 159, 

249-50 
Valtellina, 9, 11, 56, 73, 165 
Varennes, flight to, 151, 249 
Varna, port, 228 

Vauban, Marshal, 79, 90, 96, 108 
Venice, Venetia, 4, 7-9, 25-6, 91, 

119, 167, 204, 219, 242 
Verden, 61-2, 110 
Verdun, 20, 61-2, 133, 251 
Verona, 164-5, 220 
Versailles, treaty of, 141 ; court, 

146-7, 149, 251-2 
Vervins, treaty of, 45, 47, 70 
Victor Emanuel, 222, 231, 233-6, 

242-3 252 
Vienna, '89, 92-3, 116, 174, 188, 

203, 219-21 
Villa Franca, treaty of, 234, 243 
Villars, Marshal, 99, 102, 106 
Villeroi, Marshal, 99 
Vimeira, battle of, 185 
Vionville, battle of, 247, 249 
Vittoria, battle of, 195-6 

Wagram, battle of, 133, 180, 188 
Walcheren expedition, 107, 189 
Wallenstein, 54-6, 59-61 
Walpole, Sir E., 120, 122 
Warsaw, 162, 182, 206 
Waterloo, battle of, 198-202 
Wavre, 199-202 
Wellington, 185-6, 189-91, 195- 

203, 208, 210, 212, 226, 229, 265 
Westminster, treaties of, 88, 130 
Westphalia, treaty of, 61-2, 90; 

Kingdom of, 182, 205 
William I, of Prussia, 224, 237, 

244, 251, 262; II, 262, 265, 269; 

I, II and III, of Orange, see 

' ' Orange ' ' 
Windischgratz, Austrian general, 

220-1 
Witt, John de, 81, 83-4, 87 
Worth, battle of, 246 
Wurtemberg, 179, 182, 204, 242, 

245 

Yorck, Prussian general, 194 

Zollverein, the, 216, 237 
Zurich, battle of, 169 



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